Foreign Film Race Pt 3: It's your first feature and you're already submitted for an Oscar!

Everything you wanted to know about the foreign language film race ...but were afraid to ask*

Ivan Marinovic (Montenegro)Pt 1 All the trailers -Albania to Italy
Pt 2 All the trailers - Japan to Yemen

Pt 3. Filmmaking is a tough business. While the size and scope of opportunities within filmmaking industries varies tremendously across the borders, it's tough everywhere as creative careers inevitably are. So imagine then that you've finally managed to make a feature film after probably years of study and practice on shorts or frustrating fundraising efforts. Then pretend that the first time behind the camera in the narrative feature level results in your home country choosing you to represent them at the Oscars! That's incredible.

So a hearty congratulations to the 23 following first timers whose films have been selected to compete in Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film Race...

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Foreign Film Race Pt 2: All the Trailers (Japan to Vietnam)

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Foreign Language Film Category... *But Were Afraid to Ask

Pt 1 All the Trailers (Albania to Italy)

Pt 2 All the Trailers (Japan through Vietnam)
Here are all the trailers in one place! (Well two places. Part one has the first half. While you watch these we're sprucing up the Official Submission Charts right now to make them cleaner with the full list now that the Academy has made the list official.  Which of the 85 films (a record!) are you eager to see? Which do you think Oscar might also warm to? 

See more trailers than you can watch in one sitting after after the jump!

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Foreign Film Race Pt 1: All the Trailers (Albania to Italy)

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Foreign Language Film Category... *But Were Afraid to Ask

It's official. 85 countries will compete for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The 85 films will be narrowed down to 9 finalist in December with the actual nominations announced in January.

Are they any changes from our previous elaborate chart tracking? Yes. There are always a few surprises. Previously announced titles that are not on the list for reasons we're not sure about yet are Afghanistan's Parting , Armenia's The Earthquake and Tunisia's As I Open My Eyes.  Titles that we didn't have advanced notice about that are on the list are Cambodia's Before the Fall and Yemen's I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced which is Yemen's very first submission. 

Here are all the trailers in one place. We're helpful that way...

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Doc Corner: American Crime Stories in 'Tower' and 'The Witness'

Consider this: half a century ago, among the first people in the modern history to be shot and killed by a mass gunman at an American school included a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, a Latino teenage delivery boy, and a father of six. These people and fourteen more were all victims of Charles Whitman who, after murdering his mother and his wife, took a collection of rifles and ammunition to the 27th floor of the main tower building at the University of Texas in Austin and for 96 minutes fired at anybody who moved on the ground below.

Now, consider this: after 49 years of guns being banned on campus, the state of Texas’ 2015 “open carry” laws mean anybody just like Whitman could walk onto the same space today that once saw so much blood spilled and who could argue? It seems absolutely baffling that the cite of what it known as America’s first mass school shooting is now going backwards in time along with the rest of the state (and the country?). How quickly some forget the people they pay lip service towards wanting to protect.

So it is appropriate then that Tower should come along to try and remind us of the tragedies of before and, however indirectly, the absurdities of today...

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NYFF: "Toni Erdmann" is Astonishing

Here's Jason reporting from the NYFF on a Cannes favorite and Oscar hopeful

It's not often you hear an audience of movie critics gasp out loud at something on-screen, but Toni Erdmann, the new comedy of forced familial closeness from German director Maren Ade, has a comic moment so perfectly timed that it got the civilized cinema-set of New York City to jump out of their seats like this was an Evil Dead movie in 3D. You know you've got 'em hooked when you can conjure up such a response - Hitchcock called it playing the audience like a piano. The fact that it comes via a comic-beat here, and not via a cat jumping onto a final girl's shoulder or a shower stabbing, makes it all the more astonishing.

And make no mistake - Toni Erdmann is astonishing...

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