More Hope via the International Feature Film Category: 7 More Submissions

Last week I analyzed 80 of the 93 International Feature Film Oscar submissions. Since then, I was able to secure and view seven more films, three of which can be added to my list of Gems No One is Talking About (but should be). This brings my tally to 87.

I am also updating my personal Top 15 and my Predicted Shortlist before the official announcement on February 9^th (seen below). A quick note that Iran’s Sun Children was mistakenly left off each list. It’s not only a favorite of mine, but I think it has a good chance at making the AMPAS 15.

FYI: I diligently tried to get access to all 13 remaining films and had the promise of two more, but they never materialized. Bolivia, Cameroon, Cuba, Mongolia, Philippines and Vietnam, try a bit harder to promote your films next year!!!

3 More Gems

Nigeria’s very first submission, The Milkmaid, is an ambitious and empathetic feature that shines a light on the mistreatment of women under certain radical regimes. The brave director, Desmond Ovbiagele, has a singular and impressive non-linear vision and this is only his second film. The movie centers on Aisha (an excellent Anthonieta Kalunta) and her sister (Maryam Booth, astonishing). After a village insurgency, they’re both forced to marry religious extremists. Aisha escapes but, eventually, searches for her sister. “The Milkmaid” is startling and mesmerizing cinema. This has great shortlist potential, if enough members bother to watch it all the way through.

Hong Kong’s financially successful but controversial Better Days, directed by Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang, opens with a teen suicide and proceeds to tell a most compelling story of a relentlessly bullied young girl (Zhou Dongyu) in midst of studying for her all-important college entry exams. Fortuitously, she meets a street thug (a charismatic Jackson Lee) who agrees to act as her protector. There’s love story at the core of this admirable film, which does stumble into melodrama but in a way that totally works and waylays it from becoming a PSA. The film puts forth a contemplative idea, that kids were either bullied or were bullies themselves.

A criminal is released from prison and returns to a mock grave site where he buried stolen money years earlier. What he finds is a guarded shrine to an unknown saint and a village blooming where there was none before. The inhabitants include an irascible barber who also acts as a dentist, an idiot guard and his dog, a thieving nurse, a bored doctor and a moronic ex-con. How will our protagonist get to his loot? This is Morocco’s beautifully shot submission, The Unknown Saint, a droll and quirky satire on religious superstitions. Writer-director Alaa Eddine Aljem  impresses with a film that is both suspenseful and hilarious.

And…

A sweet middle-aged rom-com is at the center of Palestine’s entry, Gaza Mon Amour, directed by twins Arab and Tarzan Nasser and starring the Salim Daw and the great Hiam Abbass. I wish there had more interaction between the two actors. Abbass is so good and so underused. Set against the chaotic backdrop of the Gaza Strip, the rest of the film is about Daw discovering a statue of Apollo while fishing and being harassed by the police about it. The two plot points never fully cohere, but the film is entertaining.

Running to the Sky, from Kyrgyzstan, centers on a poor 12-year-old boy with a drunk dad and an absent mother, who decides to take part in a potentially life-changing race. Mirlan Abdykalykov keenly directs this sweet story about loyalty, commitment and perseverance.

Gregor Božič helms the Slovenian submission, Stories from the Chestnut Woods, a fantastical cinematic poem, about an elderly frugal coffin maker, with a dying wife he initially ignores, who meets up with a lonely young female chestnut seller to exchange stories. Set in a “forgotten place” in post WW2 Eastern Italy, with dialogue mostly in Italian, the film’s slow pace and sparse dialogue is a bit taxing yet it has a magnetic pull.

Inspired by real events and now the subject of great controversy, Pakistan’s “Circus of Life,” directed by Sarmad Sultan Khoosat, is about an old man whose spontaneous Lollywood dance at a wedding is captured on video and goes viral, ruining his life and making him a laughing-stock. The film’s release in Pakistan was recently postponed until the film is reviewed by the Council of Islamic Ideology and Khoosat has received anonymous death threats. I found the film’s focus confusing. Are we to have sympathy for the man or take the side of those embarrassed by him? More importantly the film felt incredibly homophobic although it may have been attempting to argue the opposite. Again, confusing.

My Personal Shortlist (Updated)

Quo Vadis, Aida?

Arracht

Charter

Extracurricular

Sun Children

Another Round

The Man Who Sold His Skin

Song Without a Name

Broken Keys

The Man Standing Next

You Will Die at Twenty

Jallikattu

A State of Madness

The Milkmaid

Better Days

Followed by:

Nafi’s Father

Working Girls

Charlatan

Hope

Night of the Kings

The Auschwitz Report

The Endless Trench

The Unknown Saint

Dara of Jasenovac

And Tomorrow the Entire World

Short List Predictions (Updated)

Another Round

Apples

Broken Keys

Collective

Dear Comrades

Hope

I’m No Longer Here

La Llarona

The Mole Agent

My Little Sister

Night of the Kings

Quo Vadis, Aida?

Sun Children

Two of Us

You Will Die at Twenty

Possibilities

Notturno

Asia

A Sun

Charlatan

The Man Standing Next

True Mothers

The Auschwitz Report

Never Gonna Snow Again

The Letter

The Milkmaid