International Feature Film Oscar List... we're almost there!

Trine Dyrholm seduces her stepson in Denmark's submission "Queen of Hearts"

Countries have until October 1st to submit their representing film to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Though there's one week left, we now have practically the whole list with 82 pictures announcing (see the charts and the letterboxd list) Last year the list was  87 pictures long and the record is 92 which was in 2017 so we'll probably see a slightly longer list when the Academy officially publishes it. Usually one or two films will mysteriously drop out or be replaced that were previously announced, too. So it's not official until it's official.

Do we talk about this category too much at TFE? Maybe so but we're into it. After the jump, 10 entries you can see early if you try and the 9 newest submissions.

The latest entries...

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"Incitement" will represent Israel at the Oscars while Thailand sends a horror film.

IncitementWe are now up to 73 films competing for those coveted 5 nominations in Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. Submissions are due to the Academy at the end of the month.  Israel's Ophir Awards were held over the weekend with Incitement taking Best Picture, making it their submission. The film tracks the year leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from the point of the view of the assassin. Curiously the film only one two Ophir Awards, the other being Best Casting. The acting prizes largely went to Peaches and Cream and the craft prizes largely went to The Unorthodox but neither could muster up the support to take the top prize. The two Israeli pictures of 2019 with the arguably highest US profiles, festival hit Synonyms (at NYFF next) and currently in release Tel Aviv on Fire (nearing half a million at US arthouses) took Cinematography and Screenplay respectively. You can see all the winners here on the updated nominations post.

Other updates? Argentina is sending the pleasant heist comedy Heroic Losers starring their ubiquitous top film actor Ricardo Darín (The Secret in Their Eyes, Wild Tales) and his son Chino Darín (El Angel, A Twelve-Year Night), neither a stranger to headlining Oscar submissions. We saw that one at TIFF and it could make the finalist list if Oscar voters are in the mood for charming 'light' entertainment.

But the real curveball, and there's always one or two true oddities in the submission list, is Thailand's choice of the horror film Inhuman Kiss (starring Oabnithi Wiwattanawrang and Phantira Pipityakorn) which is about a girl whose head detaches from her body to hunt human flesh. Has there ever been a purer form of Oscar bait? Kidding but... wow. Want to see. 

Best Actress / Supporting Actress - Chart Updates!

We fully expect Marriage Story to be nominated in all four acting categoriesBEST ACTRESS and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS charts are now up. Strangely, this year doesn't feel as competitive as usual when it comes to these two categories. That said, given the lack of a wide field of wildly loved work, we're expecting some unexpected volatility to occur. If one of the early precursors throws a major curveball expect everyone else to follow suit if the field isn't inspiring them. 

We are starting to wonder if Lupita Nyong'o is closer to a nomination for Best Actress than we thought she'd be at this point. (She's great in Us but we assumed the genre trappings would hinder her... but is enthusiasm there for other performances the way it was earlier in the year for hers? That's a campaign strength right there if Universal goes for it.)

Best Actor / Supporting Actor - Chart Updates!

by Nathaniel R

Netflix would like to have 80% of the BEST ACTOR field (Driver, Murphy, Pryce, DeNiro) but that will prove impossible.

The new predictions are in. Best Actor is more exciting and competitive than Best Actress this year which is a strange and unusual development... and we don't like it! We kid. The male actors deserve their moment in the sun occassionally, even if they're not as fun to shine light on. The strangest thing about the leading actor competition is, at least at the moment, Netflix literally appears to have about 1/3rd of the entire competitive field. But since their can be only 5, we think that this shotgun approach will only result in two nominees at best. Right now we're going with Adam Driver (who feels like the ultimate winner... though let's not pretend anything's locked up yet in late September) and Eddie Murphy (who could easily not happen given Netflix's other horses in the race).

As for Supporting Actor. It isn't that much different than Best Actor this year. This year has been fairly heavy with duet films for men (The Lighthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ford v Ferrari, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Two Popes) so naturally a few of the co-leads will definitely block out supporting players for the coveted nominations. We're mostly giving the side-eye to Willem Dafoe. He's the most egregious category frauder this year since you can't be a supporting actor in a cast of two! (There are technically a few other actors that appear in The Lighthouse but they're non-speaking cameos. It's a duet film from start to finish). It's a shame that Dafoe is competing supporting because we think he'd still be competitive for a nomination in lead despite the strong year. The only traditional-sized supporting role that we think won't be hurt by the co-leads muscling in is Alan Alda's divorce attorney in Marriage Story. In some ways he's the film's most loveable character, and Alda has been nominated for less (The Aviator). At 83 he'll have sentiment on his side, too.

UPDATED CHARTS
PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTOR | INTERNATIONAL FEATURE | ALL INTERNATIONAL FEATURE SUBMISSIONS 

Best Picture / Director Oscar chart updates !

by Nathaniel R

Marriage Story would have been a true blockbuster like Kramer vs Kramer or Terms of Endearment in a different era. Now it will just stream but could still be a big player at the Oscars.

There’s still so much we don’t know.

That’s an important fact to start with because reading online discourse about Oscar predictions each year is like pretending we live in a perpetual January when the precursors are well underway and the template is already set which will only vary slightly from organization to organization/pundit to pundit. Oscar fanatics (and pundits) never know as much as they pretend to know early on. History is filled with films with breathless first screenings that didn’t amount to much at the Oscars and vice versa. These things take time and all parts of the cycle should be considered when making predictions. If your predictions are exactly the same as someone else's this early, take a risk. Then you can be wrong in different ways instead of in the same way. Haha.

Five Very Important Things We Don’t Yet Know...

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