International Feature Oscar Submissions: Complete Analysis of All 88 Submissions

I’d like to begin with a plea to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to PLEASE consider increasing the International feature category to allow for ten nominations. On average, there are 90 films submitted each year, and I can attest to the fact that this year, now having seen all 88 entries, at least two dozen of those submissions could easily and deservedly make the final five. There are simply too many extraordinary international cinematic achievements that warrant attention and deserve recognition.

And imagine if each country were allowed to submit MORE than one film!

Okay, I’m getting way ahead of myself…

AMPAS has recently paid more attention to foreign language films with Roma (Mexico), Drive My Car (Japan), and All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) nominated in the Best Picture category and Parasite (South Korea) making history by winning the award. Let’s acknowledge the remarkable work so many filmmakers are doing around the world by allowing more filmmakers the chance to garner the kind of recognition that only an Oscar nomination can bring.

In 2020, I endeavored to see as many of the international submissions as possible. I was ultimately able to view 87 of the 93 entries. FYI, 2020 holds the record for the most countries submitting in this category in Academy history. I also briefly wrote about each one and analyzed the race via predictions and preferences for the short list.

This year I am doing the same but expanding my coverage with each film. At the end of this piece, I reveal my predictions, preferences, and some stats I have put together about this year’s films.

Preliminary voting will take place December 14-18. A final list of eligible submissions has already gone out to Academy members who have agreed to participate in first round voting.

From AMPAS: “Members have been assigned their required viewing and are already watching films on the Academy Screening Room or elsewhere. The group lists consider an equitable distribution of total runtimes, languages, continents, distributors, formats (animated, documentary, live action) and, in some cases, thematic content. Assigned group lists assure that all the films have an equitable chance to be viewed, and, of course, members are encouraged to watch as many films as possible beyond their required viewing.”

Note: 3 countries that did submit have been left off the list, Hong Kong (A Light That Never Goes Out), Kyrgyzstan (This is What I Remember), and Tajikistan (Melody). The reasons have not yet been disclosed.

The short list will be announced on December 21, 2023.

I have viewed each film in its entirety—some I’ve seen more than once. And, while a few were not my cup of tea, almost all were well-crafted—although when compared to films that could have been selected, some choices were also head scratchers (I’m talking to you, Poland). But more on that later.

It’s interesting to note that five countries have received the most nominations and wins in the 67 years that the category has been competitive (honorary awards were given prior to 1956). They are France (38 nominations, 12 wins, including 3 honorary), Italy (29 nominations, 14 wins, including 3 honorary), Germany (21 nominations, 4 wins), Spain (20 nominations, 4 wins), and Japan (17 nominations, 5 wins, including 3 honorary). Denmark has four wins as well with 14 nominations.

These six countries are favored to, at least, make the short list this year—most deservingly Italy and Spain, especially.

But too often the more prominent films (major directors, name actors, celebrity executive producers, backers with beaucoup money to promote) rule the day leaving little room for the many gems that simply do not have the means to hire major publicity teams or arrange special screenings.

From AMPAS: “When voting in the International Feature Film category during preliminary voting, they (Members) will be able to vote on all films viewed, not solely on the films in the group list. The group list ensures members meet the eligibility to vote and that all submitted International Feature films are given an equitable opportunity to be viewed. Each group has the same number of films on their required viewing list.”

And this is where things get tricky and having champions, publicists, screenings, and a name on your side gives you the edge. For example, Poland’s The Peasants is being released by Sony Pictures Classics, big studio name. The film already has a qualifying release date and a general release plan. Guild screenings are currently being held in NYC and LA. They also have a press rep and positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Now, look at Thunders from Moldova. No distribution anywhere but Moldova, so no release. No money for advertising or to arrange screenings. (The film cost $100K.) No reviews. Nothing to help AMPAS members notice the film—except their desire to seek out lesser-known titles.

Some of the best work this year is from North Macedonia, Slovenia, Czechia, The Philippines, Switzerland, Bhutan, Nepal, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Jordan, and Moldova. I can’t urge Academy members enough to give those films a chance. And note both Thunder from Switzerland and Thunders from Moldova are amazing films. Do not confuse them but please consider them.

Last year, India surprised everyone by choosing a small tribute to cinema, Last Film Show, over the crazy popular RRR (which went on to win the Best Song Oscar).

This year there are a few eye-brow raising choices.

France selected The Taste of Things over Anatomy of a Fall which seemed odd since the latter won the Palm d’Or at Cannes and has received universal acclaim. But, once you see The Taste of Things, I dare you to not be enraptured by it.

Italy had a few extraordinary films in the running including Kidnapped and La Chimera. But the power of Io capitano cannot be dismissed.

Japan’s selection of Perfect Days over Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster makes sense only because the former is directed by Wim Wenders. Monster is an extraordinary and disturbing look at adolescence, attraction and societal influence (reminiscent of last year’s Close) that I found far more beguiling. It won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes (by Yuji Sakamoto).

Venezuela’s controversy has nothing to do with the merits of the film choice (The Shadow of the Sun is terrific) but with the selection process itself. Simón, a film of extraordinary power that reveals some of the atrocities of the current regime, has strangely become the highest grossing Venezuelan film of 2023 in that country and was in contention but not selected. Writer-director, Diego Vicentini, has brought claims that rules were violated which may have affected the final outcome. Of course, the fact the film was released at all there, is bizarre because it is basically an indictment of the government.

Having seen both films, it’s apples and bananas. Both are outstanding, but one can’t deny the potency of Simón and its brutal but important message. I was reminded of Costa-Gavras’ Missing, an honest portrait of totalitarian Chile, in 1982—although we are never officially told the country is Chile!

According to the U.S. Institute of Peace, “Venezuela is in the midst of an unprecedented social and humanitarian collapse.” The U.N. in 2022 reported years of ongoing crimes against humanity there. Over seven million citizens have fled.

That brings us to the biggest blunder, submission wise: Poland. Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is a brilliant work that dares to honestly depict the refugee crisis on the Polish/Belarus border in a compelling and urgent manner. The then far-right government and Poland’s president blasted the film as “Nazi propaganda.”

Instead, Poland chose The Peasants, directed by married couple DK and Hugh Welchman, stunning in its animation, but one of most misogynistic films I have seen in a while (and that is saying a lot). I’ve noticed reviewers don’t even bother to cite this, which I find troubling. And the head of Poland’s Oscar committee, Ewa Puszczyńska, defending the decision, stated that the film shows society’s “oppression against women…sexual violence and mobbing.” Well, yes, in a disturbingly glorified manner.

It’s difficult not to view this as politically motivated. We do currently live in a culture of fear, not just here but around the world. Holland stated that the smear campaign worked when she spoke with The Hollywood Reporter. Holland: “I know all the members of the committee, and they have told me they thought my film was the best choice and would have had the best chances, but they are afraid the government will punish them if they picked it, by restricting grants or funding for their movies.”

I urge anyone interested in these controversies to investigate further and dig deeper than what might pop up on their social media feed.

Speaking of controversy, Russia suspended its Oscar committee, choosing not to submit (as they did last year) citing sanctions and persecution. Oh, the irony…

I am divided the films into six sections:

• The Two Best (in my highly subjective opinion)
• The Likely to Make the Short List
• The Gems/Potential Dark Horses That Should Be Seen
• Definitely Worthy of Consideration for Varying Reasons
• The Rest (all have something to offer)
• Yeah, No. Three that are not my cup of movie tea

The Two Best

Italy — Io capitano (I, Captain) — Director: Matteo Garrone

After seeing Marco Bellocchio’s extraordinary film, Kidnapped at the New York Film Festival, I was gobsmacked to learn it wasn’t chosen as Italy’s International submission. But that was before I saw the country’s selection, Io capitano, directed by Matteo Garrone.

This astonishing work follows two Senegalese teens on a harrowing journey in search of a better life in Europe. Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and his cousin Moussa (Moustapha Fall) naively set out for Italy, via the Sahara Desert, and through Libya. FYI: Senegal is on the West Coast of Africa, take a look at a map to chart this impossible, hellish odyssey!

Along the way the boys are tricked, cheated out of their money, and one is captured by Libyan police while another is tortured by the Libyan Mafia, culminating in an insane sea voyage right out of Greek mythology.

Garrone was inspired by a true story he read about a teen boy with no nautical experienced who was manipulated into navigating a boat carrying 250 desperate migrants across the Mediterranean.

Both epic and personal, with moments of harsh inhumanity and dreamy surrealism, the film never quite goes where you expect it to, right up to the final exhilarating moments.

Sarr is amazing in a breakthrough performance of such depth and pathos that it both anchors the film and allows us to see life from a perspective many of us cannot truly fathom.

Easily his best film (and, yes, I am including Gomorrah), Garrone won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival and has been nominated for Best Picture at the European Film Awards.

In a just world, Io capitano would be among the final 5. But it will have a difficult time getting there.

Italy has received 29 nominations and has won 14 times (3 were honorary in 1947, 1949 and 1950), holding the record for most wins. Fellini was the first to win in competition with La Strada in 1956 and Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty was the last to win in 2013. Sorrentino’s The Hand of God was the last to be nominated in 2021.

Fellini’s Satyricon, Roma, And The Ship Sails On were all submitted but not nominated.

This is third time Italy has submitted a film made by Garrone. Both Gomorrah (2008) and Dogman (2018) were selected in but were not nominated.

Io Capitano beat out Fireworks, Kidnapped and La Chimera, among others (strong competition).

Italy has been submitting for 67 years (since the conception of the award in competition, but curiously not submitting in 1973).

Io capitano is seeking distribution.

Spain — Society of the Snow – Director: J.A. Bayona

Award-winning film director Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) has taken the true and incredible survival story of the 1972 Uruguayan crash into the Andes and created a masterful piece of cinema that honors the dead as much as it respects the 16 young men that managed to survive in the harshest of conditions.

Adapted from Pablo Vierci’s book by Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques and Nicolás Casariego, Society of the Snow painstakingly and authentically depicts the crash and traumatic aftermath of the 40 passengers and 5 crew members who faced freezing temperatures, avalanche-like snowstorms and eventual lack of food resulting in them having to resort to extreme measures to stay alive. The cannibalism that has long fascinated people and was the centerpiece of the 2 other major films made about the ordeal, René Cardona 1976 Mexican feature Survive! and Frank Marshall’s 1993 Alive. Bayona does not exploit this aspect of the story but instead probes the psychological toll it takes on the survivors.

The film boasts a fantastic ensemble led by our narrator, Numa (an excellent Enzo Vogrincic). The tech aspects from score to cinematography to production design to visuals —is off-the-charts fantastic.

Bayona manages a nuanced exploration of how, when a group come to truly care about one another and work together, the impossible becomes possible—a message we profoundly need right now.

Bayona’s 2007 film The Orphanage was previously submitted by Spain.

Spain has been nominated 20 times and won 4 awards (1982’s Begin the Beguine, 1993’s Belle Époque, 1999’s All About My Mother, 2004’s The Sea Inside).

Pedro Almodóvar holds the record of submissions with 7 (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, High Heels, The Flower of My Secret, All About My Mother, Volver, Julieta & Pain and Glory).

This is Spain’s 66th submission.

Society of the Snow will be released in theaters on December 22, 2023, and then stream on Netflix.

The Likely To Make the Short List

Ukraine — 20 Days in Mariupol — Director: Mstyslav Chernov

20 Days in Mariupol is as good as documentary filmmaking gets since, in examining the atrocities perpetrated by Russia and committed against Ukrainian civilians, journalist Mstyslav Chernov exposes every harrowing, brutal aspect of this war as well as investigating the ethics of documenting such acts of barbarity. Chernov is a reporter who decided to stay in the city of Mariupol in the early days of Russia’s invasion (Feb/March 2022) and capture Putin’s reign of terror on innocent men, women and children—gathering evidence of war crimes.

“War is like an x-ray. All human insides become visible.” Chernov records people looting while the city is being destroyed by rockets. He is verbally abused by townspeople. The brave journo was in peril most of the time, but he never makes the doc about his own safety and even questions his own ethics. “I don’t know if I should keep filming or try to calm her down,” he says when he encounters a woman shattered by the siege. He does both.

As a people, we tend to tire of things easy. The war is still raging. Putin is still weaving his lies. Innocent people are still being killed. 20 Days at Mariupol is a relentless, sobering film that should be seen by anyone who actually cares about the state of the world.

Ukraine has never been nominated.
This is the country’s 16th submission.

PBS released the doc in select theaters this past summer.

France — The Taste of Things – Director: Tran Anh Hung

Move over Tom Jones and Babette’s Feast and step aside Hulu’s The Bear, France is serving up a mouth-watering buffet with Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things (The Pot-au-Feu). Foodies will savor every succulent scene and delight in the delicious performances—okay, I’ll stop now. But I was so hungry when this film was over, for food but for more of the luminous Juliette Binoche who is simply magical and deserves Oscar consideration (she received a Gotham nomination). Her grounded presence reminded me of Vanessa Redgrave’s gravitas in Howard’s End. The film takes place during the Belle Époque (1889) and is based on the 1924 novel by Marcel Rouff, but the only thing necessary to know about the plot is that Benoît Magimel plays a highly-respected, wealthy chef, who is not so secretly in love with his equally respected cook, Binoche. (And who isn’t secretly in love with Binoche, really?) There’s a joy in the love these characters have for food and for each other that washes over you.

FYI: Binoche and Magimel were married for a spell a while back and have child together. This is their first film together in over two decades.

I’m not certain this was France’s best choice for a win, but it is certainly a smart one for a nomination. It’s been three decades since the country’s last win. They made some bold choices in the last decade–Saint Laurent, Elle, BPM (Beats Per Minute), Titane–and were shunned. Interesting to note many of those films (that didn’t even make the short list) were queer-themed.

And Binoche has a legit shot at a Supporting nomination. She certainly is deserving (much moreso than some of the names being bandied about).

France holds the record for the most nominations with 38. Their submissions have won 12 times (including 3 honorary) but not since 1992 with Indochine. Their last nomination was in 2019 for Lady Ly’s Les Misérables.

Director Hung’s The Scent of Green Papaya was a nominee in 1993, submitted by Vietnam.

France has submitted 68 times and is the only country that has consistently entered the awards competition every year since the inception of the competitive category in 1956.

IFC will release the The Taste of Things in theaters in NY on December 13, 2023, and wide on Feb 14, 2024.

United Kingdom — The Zone of Interest — Director: Jonathan Glazer

I respect Jonathan Glazer’s frighteningly banal and unsettling film, The Zone of Interest, more than I was moved by it. I appreciated the singular filmmaking style as well as the messages it puts forth about denial, complicity, evil and humanity’s deeply rooted fear of getting involved or speaking out. Is it fear, though, or who we are?, I sadly wonder.
Łukasz Żal’s stunning camera work is outstanding as is Mica Levi’s haunting score. I realize I am in a minority among my fellow cinephiles, but I wonder if the Academy members won’t be put off by the often experimental (and, yes, quite bold) narrative.

Early handicappers think so and Zone did win the Grand Prix at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and has been nominated for 5 European Film Awards including Best Picture, so chances are good.

This is only Glazer’s 4th feature and his first in 10 years (since Under the Skin). Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004) are among the most hypnotic films of this millennium.

The UK has been nominated twice, no wins, and not since 1999 for Paul Morrison’s Solomon and Gaenor.

The UK has submitted 20 times.

A24 will release The Zone of Interest in select theaters on December 15, 2023.

Germany — The Teacher’s Lounge – Director Ilker Catak

The Teacher’s Lounge is an anxiety-inducing, captivating film by German director Ilker Catak, based on real experiences by Catak and co-writer Johannes Duncker. Leonie Benesch plays a teacher of early teens who finds herself digging deeper into a pit she cannot get out of (metaphorically, of course). There’s a thief on the loose in school and when Carla (Catak) thinks she’s caught the person on her computer camera, it changes everything in terms of how she is treated by faculty, her students and the accused. At the film’s outset, Carla doesn’t appreciate the McCarthy-style bullying by the administration coercing kids to name names. But when the school newspaper publishes what she sees a dubious article about her, she appears to champion censorship. Benesch leads the film with an exceptional performance. Catak ends things on a predictably ambiguous note.

Germany has received 21 nominations, with 4 wins (1979’s The Tin Drum, 2002’s Nowhere in Africa, 2006’s The Lives of Others, 2022’s All Quiet on the Western Front). This is counting the 5 East German submissions which sometimes competed against West Germany. It is the third most nominated country behind France and Italy.

Enigmatic director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was submitted once, in 1981, for Lili Marleen. He died the following year at age 37.

This is Germany’s 64th submission.

Sony Pictures Classics will release The Teacher’s Lounge Christmas Day.

Japan — Perfect Days — Director: Wim Wenders

German filmmaker extraordinaire Wim Wenders proves once again that he’s a cinematic master even with a deceptively slight script. Perfect Days centers on the mundane every life of Hirayama (Kōji Hashimoto), a quiet Tokyo toilet cleaner who follows a fairly simple daily routine that also involves his love of books and (mostly) ’70s American music as well as photography. We slowly get to peel away layers based on certain people who enter and/or reenter his life.

Hashimoto won this year’s Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and his performance anchors this beautiful film that takes a while to really begin to tell any kind of story. Once it does we realize there is a lot of past pain present—which could have been explored more. Why is he so estranged from his obviously well-to-do family? Was he once an artist? Hirayama is spiritually connected to the world but not necessarily the people who inhabit it. What was it in his past that made him swear off human beings?

Songs such as The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun, Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, Nina Simone’s Feeling Good and Van Morrison’s Brown-Eyed Girl drop some clues to Hirayama’s inner world.

The film does build to an awesome ending that may not answer many questions but is just illuminating enough.

Wenders has been nominated for 3 Oscars, in the documentary category, but never in the International Feature category, although Germany has submitted three of his films, The American Friend, Wings of Desire and Pina, which made the short list in 2011.

As good as Perfect Days is, the transcendent Monster, it’s not.

Japan has been nominated 17 times and won 3 honorary awards and 2 competitive Oscars (2008’s Departures and 2021’s Drive My Car.)

Akira Kurosawa had five of his films submitted (He won an Honorary Oscar for Rashomon in 1951) His 1975 film Dersu Uzala won the then Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar but was submitted by Russia (when it was the Soviet Union).

Japan has submitted 67 times (since the inception of the category.)

Neon released Perfect Days for a one-week run November 10 at Film Forum in NYC. The film goes wide in February 2024.

Finland — Fallen Leaves – Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s wry, acerbic love story is at times hilarious, sad, maddening and hopeful. Fallen Leaves tells the odd tale of two working class Helsinkians who can’t seem to connect with one another, even after they connect (yes, I’m being deliberately obtuse!) When life tosses them a slew of absurd obstacles they take them in stride. Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen are just fabulous as the deadpan couple in this delightful, sublime work.

Even though it’s ostensibly set today, the real time period is arbitrary as it has a ‘60s and ‘70s feel, depending on the scene and sometimes feels futuristic.

Fallen Leaves may appear a bit too slight for AMPAS tastes (appearances can be deceiving) or, giving them the benefit of the droll and satirically-oriented doubt, this one could surprise. That and it helps that Kaurismäki’s work is rightly lauded.

The film has been nominated for Best Picture at the European Film Awards and won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Finland nabbed one nomination for Kaurismäki’s 2002 film The Man Without a Past. The director’s films have been submitted 5 times.

This is the country’s 37th submission.

Fallen Leaves was released in theaters on November 17, 2023, by MUBI.

Denmark — The Promised Land – Director: Nikolaj Arcel

Some critics have called Nikolaj Arcel’s sweeping film, The Promised Land, old-fashioned and predictable. Perhaps, it is but it also happens to be gloriously satisfying filmmaking with solid performances including an understated but potent central turn by the amazing Mads Mikkelsen.

The go-to Danish actor plays the real-life Captain Ludvig Kahlen, a lower-class war vet in the mid-18th century who aspires to nobility (he is the illegitimate child of a wealthy landowner) and sets off to grow crops on the Jutland Heath in Denmark, something no man has ever been able to do. Kahlen runs into crisis after crisis including being prey to the barbaric whims of a mad, aristocratic landowner, Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg, sadistically channeling Caligula).

What is most fascinating is watching Mikkelsen’s Kahlen slowly re-examine his desire for a title and respect from the monstrous and self-serving privileged class as he builds his own family of outcasts.

This stunning film is based on a novel by Ida Jessen, It’s considered mostly fiction since very little is known about the real Kahlen.

Denmark has been nominated 14 times with 4 wins (Pelle the Conquerer in 1987, Babette’s Feast in 1988, In a Better World in 2010 and Another Round, which also starred Mikkelsen, in 2020)

Arcel’s A Royal Affair was nominated in 2012.

This is Denmark’s 61st submission.

Magnolia Pictures will release The Promised Land in U.S. theaters on February 2, 2024

Australia – Shayda – Director: Noora Niasari

Noora Niasari’s debut feature, Shayda, examines the plight of an Iranian woman, living in Australia, who seeks refuge at a women’s shelter with her 6-year-old daughter, for fear of retaliation from her husband, who repeatedly raped her and wants them both to return to Iran with him. The broken system grants her deranged husband visitation and Shayda (a deeply affecting Zar Amir Ebrahimi) must stress each and every day about the safety of herself and her child. Based on personal experience, Niasari has created a compelling, frightening portrait of a woman who must fight for her right to be free of the monster husband who sees her only as a possession and of the bondage of the misogynist culture she was born into.

Cate Blanchett is an Executive Producer on the film, giving it a short-list lean.

Australia has received one nomination, Tanna in 2016.

This is Australia’s 16th submission.

Sony Pictures Classics will release Shayda in early 2024.

Turkey — About Dry Grasses – Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

A 3-hour, 18-minute Turkish film titled, About Dry Grasses? Sure, sign me up!

This mesmerizing film, directed by epic storyteller Nuri Bilge Ceylan, takes place in rural eastern Anatolia in Turkey and centers on Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a dissatisfied and dissolutioned art teacher who cannot wait to leave the stifling town for Istanbul (but he must finish his tenure there first). Adding to his annoyances, he and his much nicer roommate and fellow teacher, Kenon (Musab Ekici) have both been accused of inappropriate behavior by one of his pet female students (who he spends way too much time with). Further complicating both their lives is another teacher from a surrounding school, Nuray (Merve Dizdar, Best Actress at Cannes), a no-nonsense, politically-astute woman who crushes on Kenon (he returns the feelings) but is seduced by the more cunning and manipulative Samet.

The film bombards with ideas and themes, while altering character dynamics and, after a particularly intense and transfixing scene (the best in the film) where Nuray takes Samat to task to defend his narrow-minded beliefs, the film takes a jaw-dropping, self-reflexive, meta-moment that I’m sure will prove divisive (I loved it).

About Dry Grasses is thought-provoking filmmaking.

Films by Ceylan have been submitted 6 times and one made the short list, Three Monkeys in 2008.

Turkey has submitted 30 times without a nomination.

Janus Films/Sideshow will release About Dry Grasses in theaters on February 23, 2024.

The Gems / Dark Horses That Should Be Considered

North Macedonia – Housekeeping for Beginners – Director: Goran Stolevski

Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners is a fast follow up feature to the sublime gay romance earlier this year, Of an Age. And he has crafted a kinetic, chaotic yet absorbing and authentic portrait of a queer and Roma family created out of necessity but brimming with affection underneath the abrasive surface. Stolevski is a bold, gifted filmmaker and Housekeeping for Beginners (winner of the Queer Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival) does not compromise in its storytelling.

The film is set in a half-way house of sorts in North Macedonia where a social worker Dita (Anamaria Marinca) resides with her lover Sauda (Alina Serban), Sauda’s daughters, their gay friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor), Toni’s teen Gay Romeo hookup Ali (Samson Selim, a find) as well as a host of strays. Stolevski deftly delves into the racial and homophobic prejudices that strongly exist in the culture. He also allows for glimmers of hope, which help to make this a potential dark horse contender.

North Macedonia has been nominated twice (Before the Rain in 1994 and Honeyland in 2019), no wins.

Stolevski’s 2022 film, You Won’t Be Alone was also submitted, by Australia.

This is the country’s 20th submission.

Focus Features will release Housekeeping for Beginners on January 26, 2024, before expanding in February.

Moldova – Thunders – Director: Ioane Bobeica

Moldova is a country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine and also borders the Black Sea. It’s the second poorest country in Europe and has a complex history which includes a strip of territory on the east bank of the Dniester River known as Transnistria (an unrecognized state). A war broke out in 1990 between Moldova and (Russian-aided) Transnistrian separatists. When the war ended land mines were left in the fields literally for decades.

Writer-director Ioane Bobeica has taken the land mine premise and fashioned a truly powerful work that, without much pretense perspicaciously comments on our divided world.

Thunders is set near that Transnistiran border, sometime after the war. A friendship begins to develop between two children. Zinca (Tincuța Josan) is a poor young girl, with no mother, whose uneducated father Iacob (Anatol Mîrzenco) refuses to allow her to go to school (he can’t afford to take her).

Zinca begins hanging out with Victor (Nicolae Cernomaz), who lives next door with his well-to-do parents, who also have a home in the city. Victor’s father has forbidden Victor to be friends with Zinca because she is lower class. But when do children do what their parents tell them?

One day, Zinca’s precious cow wanders into the mined pasture and both Zinca and Victor follow. What unfolds is a harrowing and mesmerizing non-linear narrative that sheds light on both diverse families and acts as a nerve-racking, nail-biting survival thriller.

In under 80 minutes, Bobeica examines so many of the prejudices running rampant in our world today in a non-polemic, incredibly human and humane manner.

The film is a call for unity in this divided world from an unknown director who hails from a country most westerners would not be able to find on the map.

Ironically, right before I saw Thunders, I had just streamed Season 6, Episode 2 of The Crown which saw Princess Diana visit the mines in Bosnia that had maimed and killed so many people. That heightened my level of interest, but I was not prepared for a film with such deep insight. The only flaw has to do with lousy (often grammatically incorrect and misspelled) subtitles.

Moldova has submitted 4 films for Oscars but has never been nominated.

Slovenia — Riders — Director: Dominik Mencej

Set in 1999, right before the much-anticipated collapse of civilization (at least that’s what some believed), Dominik Mencej’s debut feature, Riders, is a deeply affecting and moving road movie that deserves consideration.

Two twentysomething childhood besties, sweet and reserved Tomaž (Timon Šturbej) and restless wild-card Anton (Petja Labović) live in a remote Slovenian village with differing but troubled family lives. After watching a VHS of Dennis Hopper’s landmark film, Easy Rider, the two dudes decide to take their mopeds on the road. Along the way they encounter a runaway nun, Ana (Anja Novak) and a father-figure biker, Peter (Nikola Kojo).

The narrative unfolds in non-linear fashion as we slowly peel away layers of the internal struggles of each young man and his situation.

Šturbej is a star in the making, perfectly embodying someone who is slowly discovering who he is and who he may want to become. Labović seamlessly slips into sexy bad boy mode but allows just enough vulnerability to seep through. The two actors have great chemistry.

Queer note: as much as we are led to believe Tomaž is falling for Ana, there is a subtle but real inference that his feeling for Anton might be more than friendly—and less overtly vice-versa. Sadly, this goes mostly unexplored—despite the fact that among other films, Riders pays obvious homage to Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho.

Slovenia has never been nominated.
This is the country’s 27th submission.

Switzerland – Thunder – Director: Carmen Jaquier

Carmen Jaquier’s remarkable and audacious feature debut, Thunder, hit me like a bolt of lightning–sorry, I couldn’t resist, but it did! This hypnotic film takes on the damage that extreme religious beliefs can do to a society. In a remote Swiss village in the early 1900s, Elisabeth (Lilith Grasmug who has an Anna Paquin quality), a 17-year-old novitiate who was sent away when she was 12 and is being called back home to help work the land, soon discovers her older sister, Innocente (oh, the irony) is dead and has been labeled a whore and servant of Satan. Even the priest in town says her soul now belongs to the devil (gotta love those Catholics!)

When Elisabeth finds Innocente’s journal, she begins her own spring awakening, with the help of three handsome young local boys (Mermoz Melchior, Benjamin Python, Noah Watzlawick). All four defy the repressed locals by exploring their desire as expressions of God’s divine love. Jaquier never shies away from the queer aspect of this examination as she makes the obvious point that while the boys are punished, they can be forgiven but girls are just seen as sinful and must be either repent or suffer condemnation and banishment. The film is gorgeously shot (by Marine Atlan) and ends on a transcendent image of hope.

Switzerland has been nominated 5 times, winning twice–1984’s Dangerous Moves, 1990’s Journey of Hope.

In 1994 Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Red was submitted and disqualified in a controversial ruling about whether it was majority French or Swiss. The film went on to receive three Oscar nominations, Best Director, Original Screenplay and Cinematography.

This is the country’s 51st submission.

Thunder is currently in theaters in NYC via Dekanalog and will be released in LA soon.

The Phillippines – The Missing – Director: Carl Joseph E. Papa

One of few queer-themed submissions this year, Carl Joseph E. Papa highly personal and emotionally gripping animated film, The Missing, is a rotoscoped/2d hybrid film. The film centers on Eric (Carlo Aquino), a cute young animator who has no mouth. Eric crushes on his co-worker Carlo (Gio Gahol), who seems to return Eric’s feelings. After he receives a worried call from his loving mother, Rosalinda (Triangle of Sadness scene-stealer Dolly de Leon) concerned about the whereabouts of his Uncle, Eric and Carlo discover his dead body which sends Eric on a personal and galactic journey–Aliens need him to take over their planet—no, really!

(spoilers below)

Anyone who has been sexually abused will likely realize, early on, that Eric is dealing with past trauma. Papa does an exceptional job of layering his narrative with just the right number of flashbacks to fill the gaps in Eric’s story as he slowly comes to certain realizations. Along the way he loses an ear, an eye, his hand and his genitalia.

The Missing would make for a very difficult live-action film (although one I’d love to see). The visual choices Papa and his team of animators make work remarkably well and lead to a truly perfect ending.

The Philippines has never been nominated.

This is the country’s 34th submission (3rd to Portugal and Egypt as the country with the most submissions with no recognition.)

Czechia (formerly Czech Republic) – Brothers – Director: Tomáš Mašín

Tomáš Mašín’s sweeping, inspiring film, Brothers (aka The Yellow Affair) is based on the true story of the Mašín brothers who, during the Cold War when their family was being persecuted in Communist Czechoslovakia, decided to form an underground army and unapologetically fight back, They ultimately attempt to escape the Eastern bloc, resulting in one of the largest manhunts in modern European history.

During WW2, General Josef Mašín, Sr. formed his own resistance against the Nazis. He was jailed, tortured (but never gave anyone up) and executed. His sons, Josef (Oskar Hes) and Ctirad (Jan Nedbal), at a very young age followed in their father’s footsteps forming their own anti-Nazi movement. The film focuses on their actions in the early 1950s.

The dense and sometimes confusing screenplay is by Marek Epstein, based on the book by Josef Mašín’s daughter, Barbara.

Brothers has a Bonnie and Clyde meets The Krays feel about it. It is taut, engrossing cinema about having the courage to resist oppression. In these daunting totalitarian times worldwide, that is to be applauded and celebrated. The fact that even today in Czech society, the brothers are both famous and beloved AND infamous and despised, speaks volumes.

Czechia was nominated 3 times as Czech Republic and won once (Koyla in 1996) Czechoslovakia has been nominated 6 times with 2 wins (The Shop on Main Street in 1965, Closely Watched Trains in 1967).

30th submission as Czech Republic.
Czechoslovakia submitted 23 times.

Note to country: Settle on a name already!

South Korea – Concrete Utopia – Director: Um Tae-hwa

South Korea continues to kick cinematic ass. Filmmaker Um Tae-hwa has created a dystopian disaster thriller that is both epic and intimate, both terrifying and (sometimes) comforting, both realistic and surreal. And he’s managed to veer away from the crap-Hollywood formula that the disaster genre sadly morphed into during the ‘80s beginning with Die Hard. (Full-disclosure: huge fan of films like The Towering Inferno.)

Concrete Utopia is based on a webtoon but don’t let that scare you, it’s VERY human. At the heart of the film is a young couple (Parasite’s Park Seo-jun and Park Bo-young), living in a high-rise in Seoul, who survive an earthquake that decimates most of the city and its inhabitants. Strangely, the building is one of the few that remain standing and it becomes the hotbed for a battle of survival. The film had elements of Triangle of Sadness, Mad Max, Snowpiercer, The Poseidon Adventure and even, Dogville, in its depiction of how fickle, selfish, judgmental and downright cruel people can be in extreme situations and how an angry mob can lead to deadly consequences. But there is some hope amidst the societal collapse and man-eat-man devastation and Tae-hwa invites the viewer to wonder what they might do if forced into critical and life-threatening situations. This one hooked me completely.

South Korea has been nominated once and won (Parasite in 2019, which also won Best Picture, the only time that has ever happened).

This is the country’s 36th submission.
Concrete Utopia will open in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 8 and nationwide on December 15.

Israel – Seven Blessings – Director: Ayelet Menahemi

Reymonde Amsallem delivers a searing, captivating turn as Marie, a 42-year-old bride who returns home from France to her estranged family in Israel in Ayelet Menahemi’s funny, boisterous and disturbing film, Seven Blessings. Apparently, when Marie was 2-years old and the family was living in Morocco, her mother gave her to her infertile sister (an actual custom at that time). The family gathers over seven nights to celebrate her wedding, in Jewish-Moroccan style, but the sins of the past are soon revisited as Marie demands an apology.

Seven Blessings won 9 Ophir Awards (Israel’s Oscar equivalent) including Best Film, Director and Lead Actress (Amsallem) and is quite the stirring comedy-drama. The final quarter provides some catharsis, but Menahemi’s layered work wonders if laying blame can ever be rewarding.

Israel holds the record for the most nominations without a win: 10. Last nomination: Joseph Cedar’s Footnote in 2011.

This is Israel’s 56th submission.

Tunisia – Four Daughters – Director Kaouther Ben Hania

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin) has fashioned a narrative-docu mix that’s highly ambitious and quite engrossing. And for someone unfamiliar with the story, I was eager to know more.

Four Daughters centers on the very real and enigmatic Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters and how, via outside political forces as well as internal familial ones, the roots of extremism took hold and led to terrorism. Olfa, in addition to being in the film, is also played by a well-known Egyptian-Tunisian actor, Hend Sabri. And her two estranged daughters are played by actors as well. Her other two daughters appear as themselves. There is a lot going on in this quasi-experimental film. And I was always enthralled. The haunting final image is devastating.

Four Daughters is also eligible for the Feature Documentary Oscar. The film received a Gotham Doc award as well as a European Film Award nomination in the Doc category.

Tunisia’s one nomination was in 2020 for Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin.

This is Tunisia’s 10th submission.

Four Daughters has been released in U.S. theaters by Kino Lorber.

Bhutan – The Monk & The Gun – Pawo Choyning Dorji

In his follow up to 2019’s surprise sleeper nominee, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Pawo Choyning Dorji’s does not disappoint with The Monk and the Gun, a keenly satiric meditation on (and critique of) bastardized American values vs. enlightened (if simpler) Buddhist beliefs.

It’s 2006 and Bhutan’s King is about to step down so the country can become a democracy, but the rural citizens must be instructed on how to vote. “How would we know such useless information,“ one villager responds when being told he needs to know his birth date in order to register. In a separate but related plot, the local Lama asks his monk to find him two guns. This wholly entertaining film takes perfect pot shots at the divisive nature of American politics as well as the U.S.’s obsessive love affair with firearms. But Dorji is an equal opportunity satirist poking fun at the evils of western influences but also the dangers of unenlightened mob rule. In the end, the Lama’s intentions are both gratifying and illuminating.

Bhutan’s submissions have received one nomination.

This is their 4th time submitting with one disqualification (Lunana in 2020 which was then resubmitted in 2021 and nominated!)

Roadside Attractions will release The Monk and the Gun in 2024.

Nepal — Halkara — Director: Bikram Sapkota

Halkara (postman in Nepalese) is a stirring, absorbing work by first-time feature director Bikram Sapkota that centers on Ram, the titular character, played with just the right amount of sorrow, angst and despair by Mahesh Tripathi. He’s a drunk (with good reason we learn as the film progresses) who is urged by his brother to take a job as a postman. Ram is attacked and knocked out by a group of thieves and when he wakes up, finds his letters scattered all over a field, some torn, one—in particular—ruined by water.

Along his route he meets Mia (Binita Thapa Magar) whose husband went abroad for work. She has not heard from him in two years. Ram and Mia begin to fall for one another. There are quite of number of other engaging subplots that weave together enough intrigue and mystery right up until the end.

Sapkota’s impressive debut boasts a visual and narrative assurance (the script was co-written with Aakash Baral and Viplop Pratik) with great camerawork (by Chintan Rajbhandari) and a terrific score (by Bruno Valenti).

The movie is a testament to resilience and the power of letter-writing and how lives can change if one is lost. The art of writing letters might appear to be antiquated to westerners, but it is still one of the only ways that many people in the world can communicate with their loved ones—as is also depicted in Kenya’s film, Mvera.

Sapkota drew inspiration from a 2022 soccer World cup preparation in Qatar where so many migrant laborers endured slave-like conditions, and many died. Their tragic stories are honored in Halkara.

Nepal has received one Oscar nomination for it’s very first entry in 1999, Eric Valli’s Caravan (aka Himalaya: Caravan).

This is the country’s 13th submission.

Bulgaria – Blaga’s Lesson – Director: Stephan Komandarev

As the titular character in Stephan Komandarev’s intense and deeply engrossing thriller-of-sorts, Blaga’s Lesson, the extraordinary Eli Skorcheva gifts the film her gravitas. Blaga Naumova is a 70-year-old retired teacher, whose husband just died. She has saved enough money, which she keeps at home, to bury him properly. But phone scammers manipulate Blaga into tossing all her cash out the window (in a gut-wrenching, extended scene) and she is left humiliated and penniless. Unable to find work, mostly due to ageism, she makes a morally questionable decision that leads to startling repercussions.

Komandarev smartly keeps his focus on Skorcheva who conveys all that is necessary to understand what this once upstanding citizen has become thanks to the corrupt, morally bankrupt world she now lives in. This one takes you on quite a ride and the ending is pretty jaw dropping.

Bulgaria’s submissions have never been nominated.

This is the third film by Komandarev to be submitted (2009’s The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner, made the shortlist.)

This is the country’s 34th submission.

Dominican Republic – Cuarencena – Director: David Maler

Full disclosure, I am a sucker for movies that trap a gaggle of hapless friends (or strangers) together and then introduces a series of conflicts and narrative reveals. It’s my kind of premise. And, very often, the setting is a dinner party. But rarely does the story intrigue and fascinate throughout. Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation (2015) did a decent job of keeping the tension but it led to a high body count. Thomas Vinterberg’s brilliant Danish film The Celebration sears with its trauma reveal and aftermath. And, of course, Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece, The Exterminating Angel, is probably the greatest of all the friends-forced-together cinema.

Dominican filmmaker David Maler gives his funny and macabre spin on the genre with Cuarencena. The title card says it’s A Story in Five Courses (with wine pairing). The film centers on seven friends who gather during the Covid pandemic, despite the fact that a nationwide curfew is in order (and the DR apparently took their quarantine very seriously hauling off insubordinates to camps). Most every character is harboring some past (or present) secret and there is a major crime committed…or is there?

The film could have been titled, The Chef, his Wife, his now-lesbian former lover, Her lover, Her lover’s lover who happens to be the Chef’s Brother, and an annoying Estranged Couple. (my attempt at a play on Peter Greenaway).

Each character is well-developed and while the film can be predictable at times, it is never dull. And the score, by John Benitez, is fantastic. My only complaint is I wanted to spend more time with these folks. And drink some wine!

FYI: Cuarencena is a Spanish play on words meaning Quarandinner.

The Dominican Republic has never been nominated.
The country has submitted 16 times.

Nigeria – Mami Wata – Director: C.J. Obasi

With its stark, mesmerizing monochrome visuals, stirring score and supernatural elements, C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s Mami Wata, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, is a truly beguiling and unsettling experience.

Set in a fictional West African oceanside village, Mami Wata tells the story of matriarch Mama Eve (Rita Edochie) who refuses to modernize her people and claims to be an ‘intermediary’ between them and the titular venerated water deity. But a young death leads to skepticism and allows a literal mysterious stranger (Emeka Amazeke) to sow the seeds of rebellion. And both Mama Eve’s daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and adopted daughter, Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen) are caught in the middle.

Beyond its gloriously arresting visual style, Mami Wata is an interesting comment on power and corruption, whether it’s faith-based or practical. The film also acts as a warning against technological progress in the wrong hands.

This is Nigeria’s third Oscar submission, no nomination.

Mami Wata was released by Dekanalog this past September.

Ireland – In the Shadow of Beirut – Directors: Stephen Gerard Kelly & Garry Keane

Stephen Gerard Kelly and Garry Keane’s powerful documentary, In the Shadow of Beirut, examines the impoverished lives of four families living in the Sabra and Shantila areas outside Beirut, Lebanon. Kelly spent five years living among these families.

The filmmakers do not dwell on the often confusing and divisive political situation in the Middle East but, instead, focus on the people living in abject poverty in the filthiest conditions, who have been forsaken by everyone. This is a nightmarish example of people being used and abused because of geopolitical battles being waged— much like the Polish/Belarus horrors depicted in Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border. I would have liked to know more about why the government of Lebanon abandoned these people and refuse to help. And what of other surrounding countries?

The film is executive produced by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

In the Shadow of Beirut is also eligible in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Ireland has been nominated once, last year, for Colm Bairéad‘s The Quiet Girl.

This is their 9th submission.

Taiwan – Marry My Dead Body – Director — Cheng Wei-Hao

Cheng Wei-Hao’s Marry My Dead Body takes the actual Chinese tradition of a “ghost marriage” where one or both spouses are dead, and gives it a gay, comic spin. Greg Hsu plays an ambitious homophobic cop who, through a series of zany events, finds himself married to a cute young gay man (Austin Lin), killed by a hit-and-run-driver. Yes, you read that correctly. The ensuing otherworldly silliness is a hilarious delight that some might find offensive since it isn’t careful or woke, but it is sweet and touching, albeit in a wildly, abrasively entertaining manner. Note: Same sex marriage became legal in Taiwan in 2019, so this exploration is still slightly daring. Taiwan does happen to be one of the most progressive countries in Asia when it comes to LGBTQ acceptance. This is also one of very few overtly queer international submissions.

Hsu is a pleasure to watch journeying from homophobe to someone he never expected to become. It’s just a shame that the filmmaker didn’t have the daring to give us a gay love scene or even kiss (hard to do with a ghost but…)

AMPAS has never been too keen on comedies in this (or any) category, and action comedies, well, forget it…which is a shame because Wei-Hao is a master at genre-blending.

Taiwan has been nominated 3 times, all Ang Lee films–The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman in 1993 and 1994–and won for Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000.

This is Taiwan’s 49th submission.

Marry My Dead Body is currently streaming on Netflix.

Definitely Worthy for Varying Reasons

Venezuela –The Shadow of the Sun – Director: Miguel Ángel Ferrer

Miguel Ángel Ferrer’s feature The Shadow of the Sun is a triumph-over-adversity, Hollywood-inspired, feel-good (ultimately, anyway) movie that just melted me (not an easy task) but not before taking me on a bit of an anxiety-inducing ride.

Set in rural Venezuela the film centers on two brothers, Alex (newcomer Anyelo Lopez) a glass-half-full deaf, gay teen and Leo (Carlos Manuel Gonzalez) his significantly older, more jaded sib who is in financial dire straits and lives with a crippling nag of a girlfriend. The town is run by a gang of violent and homophobic youth who, like the mob, expect their cut of everything.

Alex, who happens to be a songwriter, tries to convince Leo, who happens to be a terrific singer, to take part in a musical talent show for the monetary reward. It’s this sibling relationship that is the heart of this deeply affecting film that carefully blends the gritty and the hopeful.

Gonzalez, in a perfectly understated turn, anchors the film. Lopez is a find as Alex. Lopez has a penultimate reel confrontation with Gonzalez that is as riveting as it is cathartic.

Ferrer exposes the horrific homophobia that runs rampant in these small towns where admitting to being gay could mean signing your own death certificate. And he still finds a way to give Alex his agency…if only until the credits roll. Note to filmmaker: the post-credits life of Alex is a perfect starting point for his story to be told.

The selection controversy should not take away from the quality of this work. It should, however, shine a light on the astounding injustices going on in that country.

Venezuela has never been nominated.
This is the country’s 33rd submission.

Austria – Vera – Directors: Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel

Vera Gemma is the daughter of Giuliano Gemma, a gorgeous Italian spaghetti western star who was quite famous overseas and made a ridiculous number of films. (His final role was as the Hotel Manager in Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love in 2012.) Vera is a fiftysomething, struggling actress (when she feels like auditioning) who is always eclipsed by her late father.

Italian and Austrian filmmakers Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel have created a film fiction with startling elements of reality where the viewer decides what is what. In the film the titular character’s addled driver accidentally hits an 8-year-old boy and Vera becomes bonded to the child and his father (Daniel De Palma). The actress, playing a version of herself, is at first off-putting but quickly becomes an endearing and sympathetic figure as we watch her endure humiliation after humiliation. Asia Argento (Dario’s daughter) has a potent cameo as Vera’s bestie. The film is a hypnotic hybrid about survival in a world that values money and celebrity above all else.

Austria submissions have received 4 nominations and two wins, The Counterfeiters (2007) and Amour (2012). Both Great Freedom (2021) and Corsage (2022) made the short list but failed to be nominated.

This is Austria’s 47th submission.

Jordan – Inshallah A Boy – Director: Amjad Al Rasheed

Amjad Al Rasheed’s moving, suspenseful, yet all too real drama, Inshallah A Boy is buoyed by a commanding performance by Mouna Hawa as Nawal, a 30-year-old Jordanian woman who has the misfortune of losing her husband and then having his brother (representing the family) greedily move to take everything away from her. Director Al Rasheed and his co-screenwriters, Rula Nasser, Delphine Agut take aim at the misogynist culture Nawal is forced to live in where the legal system is a slave to religious beliefs and where women have little to no rights.

The film piles on the insurmountable situations Nawal must battle, most stemming from her brother-in-law Rifqi (Haitham Omari) and his avarice and lack of sympathy. But the creators smartly show that Nawal is a complex being, who is unwilling to be subservient. There is also a strong subplot involving another character’s need for an abortion and the dangers involved.

Inshallah A Boy is the kind of film where you anticipate much of the plot before it happens, including the deux ex machina ending, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so well-crafted and Hawa so riveting.

Jordan has one nomination, for Naji Abu Nowar’s Theeb in 2015.

This is the country’s 7th submission.

Inshallah A Boy will be released by Greenwich Entertainment in March 2024.

Canada – Rojek – Director: Zaynê Akyol

Zaynê Akyol uncompromising doc, Rojek, travels to Syria where the Kurdish soldiers, who themselves are at the mercy of ongoing politics, have overtaken ISIS (for now) and are trying to keep the area under control. The lion’s share of Akyol’s film consists of frank interviews with ISIS prisoners, who share stories of their indoctrination as well as their continued belief that “disbelievers” must be converted or killed.

These talking heads discuss a wide range of topics. They express concern for their families (most of whom are being kept in refugee camps). One man discusses how he longs to be a martyr so in heaven he can have many virgins who “will do anything you want.” Another matter-of-factly explains just punishments, stoning if SHE commits adultery and, of course, sodomites (gays) get thrown from buildings.

Rojek is a startling, terrifying account of just how good people turn to terrorism and justify their actions because of the brainwashing of religious zealots. It’s a truly disturbing doc, illuminating a mindset that is difficult to comprehend but that must be understood if there is to ever be anything close to an attempt at a peaceful coexistence.

Canada has received 7 nominations and won once for Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions in 2003. Four films by Arcand have been submitted, 3 receiving nominations.

This is Canada’s 49th submission.

Icarus Films will release Rojek in 2024.

The Netherlands – Sweet Dreams – Director: Ena Sendijarević

Ena Sendijarević’s second feature, Sweet Dreams, is a strangely spellbinding, dark and satiric examination of the Dutch colonial history in Indonesia. Set in 1900 in the Dutch East Indies on a sugar plantation, the film tells the story of one landowner’s exploitation of Indigenous people and how his house of cards comes tumbling down. The wealthy and powerful patriarch Jan (Hans Dagelet) suffers a heart attack (or stroke?) one night while his wife, Agathe (the great Renée Soutendijk of Spetters and The 4th Man) does nothing to help him. Jan has an illegitimate son, Karel (a haunting Rio Den Haas) with his servant and mistress Siti (Hayati Azis). Upon Jan’s death, his rather bumbling son Cornelius (Florian Myjer) arrives with his greedy, pregnant wife Josefien (Lisa Zweerman). They are not happy to discover he’s left his estate to Karel.

Some might be put off by the mix of grotesque characters, genre blends (surreal-comedy thriller?) and extreme cinematic brush strokes (especially in the final 20 minutes). I was enthralled by this “horrific fairly-tale” (director’s description) and especially intrigued by the only survivor being of two very different but cruel cultures, lying dormant, about to awaken to a world filled with new possibilities.

The Netherlands has 7 nominations and 3 wins (1987’s The Assault, 1996’s Antonia’s Line, 1998’s Character). Their last nomination was in 2003 with Ben Sombogaart’s Twin Sisters.

Director Fons Rademakers (The Assault) holds the record of submissions with 5.

This is the 56th Dutch submission.

Romania – Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Director: Radu Jude

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu Jude’s follow up to 2021’s audacious Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn, (Romania’s 2021 submission) continues the provocateur’s satiric spotlight on the absurdities in our worldwide culture, while specifically targeting Romania’s past and presence. Boasting a marvelously wacky turn by Ilinca Manolache, Jude has created another extraordinary and singular cinematic investigation. But the unnecessarily lengthy running time and the long takes of Manolache driving (I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many scenes of one person in a car driving in any film ever—even “Drive Your Car.”) might turn off voters.

Romania has received one nomination, in 2020 for Alexander Nanau’s Collective. Jude’s films have been submitted 4 times.

This is their 39th submission.

MUBI will release DNETMFTEOTW in early 2024.

Thailand – Not Friends – Director: Atta Hemwadee

One of the few comedies submitted this year—and the only teen high school comedy—Atta Hemwadee’s first-feature, Not Friends, caused a bit of controversy simply because it was selected and might not be appropriate to represent Thailand.

And sure, it’s silly at times and sentimental (I did tear up) but I also found it to be strangely arresting and the narrative continuously impresses by introducing new and unexpected surprises.

The film begins with a fairly nondescript student named Joe (Pisitpon Ekpongpisit) getting hit by a car and dying. The school goes into mourning mode, but it becomes apparent that no one was really friends with Joe. Enter handsome and devious Pae (Anthony Buisseret), a boy who had to leave his old school because he slashed his girlfriend’s face for breaking up with him. Pae is not the best student and sees an opportunity to skip past a university exam he will surely fail, by making a short film that he hopes will get him exempt. And he decides to make it about his “best friend” Joe, whom he spoke to once, and wasn’t very kind to. Enter Bokeh (Thitiya Jirapornsilp) an actual friend of Joe, who threatens to expose Pae, but then decides to help him make the film.

And that’s just the set up. Midway through another key character enters the story, upsetting all plans and exposing a major secret Joe kept. And I’m not even mentioning the La La Land-ish twist near the end…

Not Friends is great fun but also has something to say about friendship, maturation and how selfless behavior has its own rewards. Writer-director Hemwadee knows how to achieve just the right blend of black comedy and pathos. And the cast of young actors are terrific.

So, what’s wrong with a teen comedy in the International Feature race?

Thailand has never been nominated.

This is the country’s 30th submission.

Belgium – Omen – Director: Baloji

Winning the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes this year, rapper turned filmmaker Baloji, takes his own Belgian-Congolese heritage and channels it into a truly beguiling, edgy and haunting cinematic work that blends magical realism with domestic drama and horror.

Omen is broken up into 4 chapters. In the first, we meet Koffi (Mac Zinga) a Congolese Belgian returning to his birthplace for the first time in almost 2 decades after being banished to Europe because he was born with a birth mark. He’s arriving with his pregnant white fiancée, Alice (Lucie Debay). To say he isn’t warmly greeted is an understatement (especially from his Mama) and a nosebleed incident turns into a bizarre exorcism-type ritual where cultures clash.

Chapter 2 is about Koffi’s sister getting an STD from her cheating boyfriend. Chapter 3 introduces some of the strangest most intriguing characters, Paco (Marcel Otete Kabeya) a teen antibiotic dealer who is the leader of a group of outcasts who all dress in pink drag. His warped-Jets-vs.-Sharks-rival is a fascinating, Gollum-eyed villain (Mordecai Kamangu) I wish we learned more about.

In the final chapter we are privy to Mama Mujila’s (steely Yves-Marina Gnahoua) story of patriarchal trauma and the real reason she was forced to send him away. Omen is yet another film that depicts how women in certain parts of the world no longer matter once their husbands die.

Baloji is a filmmaker to watch. An artist who paints with elaborate cinematic brush strokes and creates gorgeous, if frightening, tableaus, in the process.

Belgium’s submissions have received 8 nominations but no wins. Lukas Dhont’s Close was nominated last year.

This is Belgium’s 48th submission.

Omen will be released in theaters by Utopia in early 2024.

Cuba – Nelsito’s World – Director: Fernando Pérez

Fernando Pérez’s Nelsito’s World is quite the enigmatic viewing experience even after a second look, which is part of the films magic as well as the charm of the central figure. Nelsito (Jose Raul Castro) is a 16-year-old boy who never speaks, rarely even moves but whose wide eyes and glorious smile reveal an entire world of endless possibilities and creative narratives–most of them super dark and mysterious.

We’re never told exactly why Nelsito is immobile. It might be autism. It doesn’t matter. Via voiceover and a cinematic structure that continuously blurs reality, surreality and fantasy, he takes us on a journey where he imagines the people in his life in the most outrageous of circumstances, whether it be two conniving young boys tricking an old woman or a trio of gal-pals disposing of a recently murdered body–a scene that could have been lifted from Almodovar.

Even the young girl in his inner world is elusive and seemingly ephemeral. But one thing is certain, Nelsito’s world is a fascinating, often nasty, always probing place to visit.

Cuba has received one nomination, for 1994’s gay-themed Strawberry and Chocolate.

This is Pérez’s third film submitted for Oscars (Hello Hemmingway in 1991 and Suite Habana in 2003).

Cuba has submitted 23 times.

Montenegro – Sirin – Director: Senad Šahmanović

Sirin is an Eastern Slavic mythological creature akin to an Ancient Greek Siren who lures men to their doom. Exactly what this means as metaphor in Senad Šahmanović’s Sirin remains slightly elusive as we are only given tiny hints about why our central character is so distressed and disturbed to be back in her small Montenegro town (in a part of the former Yugoslavia).

The film opens with a heinous event that occurred in 1993, during the ethnic Yugoslavian conflict, when 18 men were taken from a train and murdered simply for having Bosniak names. Our protagonist is a small child aboard the train and thus begins the trauma that will eventually lead to her leaving for the U.S. and never looking back (although this is even vague).

But she does return, on business. Nathalie (Serbian-Danish actress Danica Ćurčić) now grown up, arrives with her American boss Valerie (May-Linda Kosumović) to oversee why the building of a chapel (a client’s last wish) has been delayed. Natalie also begins to stalk her estranged sister. She is on a journey of self-discovery in the place she tried to erase from her own history.

Sirin is about identity and culture, about pride and shame, about religion and politics and about detachment and connection.

Quo Vadis, Aida? star Jasna Đuričić has a small but potent part in this enigmatic but always intriguing film.

Montenegro has never been nominated. This is their 10th submission.

FYI: The former Yugoslavia is now 7 countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Kosovo.

Yugoslavia received 6 nominations, no wins from 1958 to 1991 including Emir Kusurica’s When Father was Away on Business in 1985.

Yugoslavia submitted 29 times.

Argentina – The Delinquents – Director: Rodrigo Moreno

Rodrigo Moreno’s strangely compelling heist film, The Delinquents starts with a most unusual premise. A shy, respected bank clerk (Daniel Elías) enters the vault and walks out with specified amount of cash (a lot of it). Knowing he will be caught on camera; he has hatched a plan to turn himself in but must first convince his co-worker (Esteban Bigliardi) to hide the money for him—offering him half. Things do NOT go as planned as Moreno continuously layers the story and explores themes of greed and freedom (and whether the twain can ever meet). But the 3-hour running time eventually exhausted me (and I like long movies)!

Argentina’s submissions have received eight nominations and two wins (The Official Story (1985 and The Secret in Their Eyes (2009). The country was last nominated last year for Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985.

This is Argentina’s 50th submission.

MUBI released the film in theaters this past October. The film begins streaming on MUBI December 15, 2023.

Brazil – Pictures of Ghosts – Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Brazilian filmmaker and obsessive cinephile Kleber Mendonça Filho decided to revisit the city of Recife, Brazil, where his cinematic adventures began on the big screens of now-defunct theaters like the Veneza and the São Luiz, for his truly personal doc, Pictures of Ghosts. His previous film, Bacurau, was an international sensation and won the Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.

With Ghosts he delves into memory, inspiration and a genuine love for the medium. He also mourns the drastically altering landscapes that have turned bustling movie palaces into empty rooms and vacant lots. It’s a definite valentine to cinema but may be considered too modest a film for a nomination. It may have a better chance in the Feature Documentary category.

Brazil’s submissions have been nominated 4 times with no wins, the last in 1998 for Walter Salles’s Central Station.

This is Filho’s second Brazilian submission (Neighbouring Sounds was selected in 2013).

This is Brazil’s 53rd submission.

Grasshopper Films will release Pictures of Ghosts in theaters in early 2024.

Bangladesh — No Ground Beneath My Feet — Director: Mohammad Rabby Mridha

“Shut up or I’ll tear you apart!” yells a random road-enraged driver as our protagonist, Saiful, attempts to navigate the war-like streets of Dhaka to try and get to one of his many angry and/or drowning wives and families. Or was it to help in a robbery ring? Or to take part in another hustle? Or…it doesn’t matter since it’s something shady or untoward.

No Ground Beneath My Feet, Bangladesh’s entry, arrived at the very last minute as Oscar film #88. By this time, I was pretty numb to man’s inhumanity to man and women being abused themes—whether really occurring (docs), in films based on true stories or in often-powerful fictions. What I was not expecting was, arguably, the most loathsome and horrific portrait of how far humanity can sink.

The movie centers on Saiful (Mostafa Monwar), a poor ambulance driver who has, I’m not sure how many wives, and seems to owe the world money. Everyone wants a piece of him, or to harm him. And his boss won’t let him take any time off, nor will he pay him the back salary he is owed.

Meanwhile, the rains are destroying his hometown (climate change), where his (I’m guessing first) wife and family are struggling to simply survive—and bury her dead father. Things go from horrible to unbearable as the viewer is bombarded with thievery, humiliation, starvation, violence, rape and murder. Everyone is looking out for themselves and not caring for anyone else. Almost no one has any redemptive qualities—certainly no scruples or moral compass to speak of.

The surreal aspects of No Ground cannot be over-stated. Some parts of the film play like a lunatic comedy, until they don’t, because much of it feels grounded in realism. And that’s why the film is so disturbing.

I’ve watched misery-porn and torture-porn. This is humans-are-garbage, trainwreck-porn. Surely, the characters in this film can’t really be human. But they are. This is what they’ve been forced to become living in such horrific poverty and squalor. (From the little reading I’ve done the situation in most of Bangladesh is truly dire.)

Despite the emotional drain the mind-numbingly depressing narrative places on one’s psyche, the film is strangely transfixing.

Now, I need a shower.

Bangladesh has never been nominated. This is the country’s 19th submission.

Indonesia — Autobiography — Director: Makbul Mubarak

“Is loyalty still honorable if and when it is pledged to something monstrous?”

In the director’s note for his very personal feature debut, Autobiography, Makbul Mubarak asks this quite pointed question. From the mid-60s to the late ‘90s, Indonesia was under a brutal, genocidal military dictatorship and the values learned then are still being taught today according to the filmmaker. This is quite apparent in the heart of darkness-type journey of his central character, Rakib (an impressive Kevin Ardilova), who tends house for a wealthy retired general, Purna (Arswendy Bening Swara), as his (now imprisoned) father did before him (and his father before him, and back). Purna acts as Rakib’s mentor and the two bond. In one bathing scene it looks as though Purna might want to cross that line, or is it just a power play? Purna is running for Mayor and a vandalization of his election poster leads to his showing his true, murderous colors and Rakib needing to make life-changing decisions.

Autobiography is deliberately murky visually and has an intentionally slow pace in keeping with its intriguing psychological look at its two main characters—mirrors of one another in many ways.

The film asks some mighty questions about the need to recognize the capacity to do bad in ourselves before we can, hopefully, move forward, be better. Does a repressed society need to tap into their own dark side in order to exorcise the demons of the past?

Indonesia has never been nominated. This is the country’s 25th submission.

India – 2018: Everyone is a Hero – Director: Jude Anthany Joseph

We’ve had several film submissions this year that could have easily fit into the disaster genre of the 1970s (a compliment from me) where multiple stories were being told but then took a backseat to some natural (or man-caused) disaster.

Jude Anthany Joseph’s intense and relentless feature, 2018: Everyone is a Hero, is much like Concrete Utopia in evoking Mark Robson’s Earthquake, but unlike the latter film, 2018’s focus is on the heroics of a community abandoned by their leaders–although the film barely delves into the government’s accountability for the catastrophe, a missed opportunity.

Joseph doesn’t spend much time developing his characters beyond the simplistic, but he does create a frightening and riveting survival thriller, based on the real 2018 flooding in Kerala. And to be fair, regarding character development, the screener I was sent was 126 minutes vs. the 148-minute cut that played overseas.

In 2018, extreme flooding, caused by rain, drowned most parts of the city of Kerala. Joseph zeroes in on a handful of differing individuals and follows them as they do what they must to survive and, most importantly to this film, come to the aid of others in peril. There are many nail-biting emotional segments and amazing moments. One scene where a pregnant woman and her child are airlifted to safety is reminiscent of a number of scenes from John Guillermin and Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno.

The one acting standout is Tovino Thomas as Anoop, a former army soldier who is, arguably, the most heroic character in the film. The popular actor (he averaged 4-5 films a year in India this past decade) has that extraordinary ability to be both vulnerable and charismatic, and in the film 2018, both are essential.

India has received three nominations, no wins.

Last year, the immensely popular RRR was overlooked for the smaller film, Last Film Show, which made the shortlist but not the final five. The decision to not enter RRR remains a mystery. RRR won the Best Song Oscar for “Naatu Naatu.”

India has been submitting on and off since the 2nd year the category began, this is their 56th entry.

Greece — Behind the Haystacks — Director: Asimina Proedrou

Asimina Proedrou’s debut feature, Behind the Haystacks begins with a large lakeside event with children entering the scene claiming that they found two dead bodies. The narrative then breaks into three separate chapters piecing together a dark and tragic story about survival, at any cost.

Stergios (Stathis Stamoulakatos) is a struggling co-op farm worker and fisherman with a devout Christian wife, Maria (Lena Ouzounidou) and a teen daughter Anastasia (Evgenia Lavda) who is beginning to discover herself as a sexual being. As the narrative unfolds, we realize Stergios not only embezzled from the other farmers, but, in order to pay the money back, has made a deal with the devil (his mobster brother-in-law) to traffic refugees across a lake from North Macedonia to Greece.

Maria is conflicted because the Church says that it is sinful to aid the refugees who are living in squalor in a camp nearby, because they’re Muslim. She would like to help but she doesn’t want to piss off the priest and mess up her standing in the community.

Anastasia has embarked on an affair that could spell trouble if her father finds out about it.

All these elements weave together and the end result show (like in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors) that those who commit the worst sins aren’t punished and those who are guilty of smaller infractions, suffer most.

As in a number of entries this year, Proedrou exposes the dark side of human nature, especially when it comes to protecting lives and livelihoods.

Greece has been nominated 5 times, with no wins.

Two Michael Cacoyannis Greek tragedies were nominated, Electra in 1962 and Iphigenia in 1977. The last nomination for Greece was in 2010 for Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth.

This is their 43rd submission.

Iraq — Hanging Gardens – Director — Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji

Iraq’s submission, Hanging Gardens, has one of the oddest premises of all the feature submissions. 12-year-old As’ad (a terrific Hussain Muhammad Jalil) picks rubbish to sell with is older brother Taha (Wissam Diyaa), in order to make money to feed themselves. As’ad has a side trade with older teen Amir (Akram Mazen Ali) where he gathers porn from a U.S. dump in a perilous ‘red zone’ for extra cash. One day he uncovers an American sex doll, shares it with Amir, and before you can say capitalism, they have a buzzy business where young men line up for their turns with the doll. Things get pretty sticky from there (sorry, I had to).

Seedy? Perhaps. But, also, telling. In a society where women are rarely, if ever, even seen, the film explores how repression can manifest itself.

As’ad has his own purer relationship with the doll. He’s protective of her and grows quite fond of her. So, the story is not just about innocence lost, but about just how young boys growing up in certain cultures are not allowed a childhood, therefore never experience the innocence we in the west idealize, nor are they allowed a natural adolescence.

First-time feature director Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji has a keen eye—even if some of his scenes are so darkly filmed it becomes impossible to know what is happening. And Hanging Gardens is original, for sure.

The title refers to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, what said zone is called.

Iraq has never been nominated.

This is their 12th submission.

Chile – The Settlers – Director: Felipe Gálvez Haberle

Felipe Gálvez has fashioned a harsh narrative that focuses on the genocide of South American Native at the turn of the 20th century in Chile. The film follows three horsemen hired by a rich and tyrannical landowner to help open a route to the Atlantic Ocean. Alas, that also means murdering the indigenous tribes along the way. There’s a power to the film that packs a punch, but it also tends to meander. Still, this is an important story that has been erased from Chilean history.

Chile’s submissions have been nominated twice and won for Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman (2017).

Films by Pablo Larrain have the most submissions with 4. He was nominated once in 2012 for No, starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

This is Chile’s 28th submission.

MUBI will release The Settlers in theaters on January 12, 2024.

Luxembourg – The Last Ashes – Director: Loïc Tanson

The tag line for Loïc Tanson’s harsh, grim but wholly absorbing debut feature, The Last Ashes, is “they won’t see her coming,” and the logline reads: “A female-led modern western set in Luxembourg in 1854. And that is certainly what it is, a 19th century European story told through a contemporary lens (and one that has seen MANY franchise horror films and many a Ford, Peckinpah and Eastwood western!)

The movie opens in 1838 on the cusp of Luxembourg’s independence from various foreign regimes. Famine and disease have spread but in the North the Graff family, led by a ruthless tyrannical patriarch (Jules Werner), keeps his inhabitants fed and safe but under rigid rules that basically enslave them. Women fare even worse. As soon as young girls begin to menstruate, they are raped by him and then passed on to his sons.

One 12-year-old girl and her family defy the Graffs, and the parents pay with their lives. Fifteen years later, a young woman (Sophie Mouse, in savage super-hero mode) returns to this Godforsaken village to seek her revenge. Sound like a Tarantino film? It plays like one, too.

This ultimately female-empowering, sometimes-gratuitous film, in today’s hateful climate, can feel quite cathartic.

Luxembourg has never been nominated. This is their 19th submission.

Sudan – Goodbye Julia – Director: Mohamed Kordofani

Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia is set in Khartoum, amidst the intense civil unrest in the years before the 2011 approval of South Sudan secession. The North vs. South division resonates with our current Blue State/Red State conflicts—but not as bloody a battle (yet). And the filmmaker captures the horrible bigoted feelings many northerners have for southerners.

But in addition to the religious, ethnic and social quandaries, Kordofani delves into a moral and ethical tale with Goodbye Julia which is ostensibly about what brings two very different women together to forge a bizarre bond.

The film opens with Mona (Eiman Yousif), a rich Muslim woman married to the racist Akram (Nazar Gomaa). One day while driving and not paying attention to the road, Mona strikes a young boy and flees the scene. His father, a southerner, follows her on his motorcycle. When he reaches her home, Akram is there with his rifle. He proceeds to shoot the man dead. It is then covered up and Mona never speaks the truth to anyone. What she does is seek out the man’s Christian widow, Julia (Siran Riyak), and begins to try and make amends to her and her son (without confessing her transgressions).

Amidst the explosive political backdrop is a story that meditates on hatred, dishonesty, atonement and forgiveness. It’s also another movie about how, in certain cultures, women must capitulate to the patriarchy in order to survive.

The film’s final shot is chilling.

Sudan has not been nominated. This is Sudan’s second submission.

Georgia — Citizen Saint — Director: Tinatin Kajrishvili

As bleak but striking black and white allegory cinema goes, Tinatin Kajrishvili’s Citizen Saint has some great ideas that lose vitality in the second half only to resurrect its urgency in the final moments.

In the film, pious therefore seemingly Christian-behaved families in a small mining town pay homage to an unnamed saint that literally looks over the mine (where many died in a cave-in 10 years ago). But one day the preserved crucified monument is taken down for restoration and, lo and behold, the saint comes back to life. And while his presence is celebrated and the mute saint even performs some miracles, townsfolk become wary that the saint is now living amongst them. After all, he knows all the secrets they have confessed to him over the years. What if he started to speak?

The film then stumbles to a predictable damnation of human behavior as the citizens begin to doubt and lost hope and then actually, blame the saint for returning. Citizen Saint is reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s far superior Dogville in the sense that this is a crap town filled with crap people who have done crap things will do what they must to hide that fact.

I like bleak, but tedious is another matter. Considering the premise, the film should have been far more compelling, but it is still filled with startling images and has quite a few things to say about fear and mob mentality as well as being a harsh comment on superstition and faith. And the final line is a rather profound statement about people and all religions.

Georgia has been nominated once in 1996 for Nana Jorjadze’s A Chef in Love

This is the country’s 22nd submission.

Palestine — Bye Bye Tiberias — Director: Lina Soualem

In Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film, The Visitor, the French-Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass (Succession) portrays a Syrian widow who has a brief friendship/flirtation with a loner played by Richard Jenkins, who received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Despite some buzz Abbass failed to land a Supporting Actress nod. The film examined identity as one of its themes.

Abbass’ daughter, Lina Soualem, has fashioned a highly personal doc, Bye Bye Tiberias, that probes that same theme, involving four generations of Palestinian women, their trials and tribulations. Strangely, Soualem, herself, chooses to stay off camera.

Using archival and family footage, photographs and family chats, Soualem traces her great-grandmother’s displacement from Tiberias in Palestine during the war in 1948 (where Palestinians were relocated to bordering Lebanon, Jordan or Syria), to her mother’s bold decision, at age 23, to leave her family in order to pursue her acting dream.

It’s a bittersweet film and, unsurprisingly, the most beguiling figure is Abbass herself, raw with emotion regarding the decisions she made and her feelings about her lineage.

As an only child with no children myself, I have often been struck with the notion that each familial death begets more lost memories, more chunks of history left on the eternal cutting room floor (forgive the pretension). Bye Bye Tiberias renewed that sorrowful but real idea and had me perusing old photos in hopes of refreshing my own memory of those who have gone—if only for a moment.

Palestine has received 2 nominations. This is their 16th submission.

China — The Wandering Earth II — Director: Frant Gwo

The Wandering Earth II is a visually-ambitious, often perplexing prequel to the enormously successful adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel, The Wandering Earth. I’m not sure if seeing the first film might have helped trying to follow the insanely convoluted narrative. The quick-flash subtitles didn’t help (and I’m a fast reader).

At the end of the film’s near 3-hour running time, I was sure there was a great 2-hour film within this bouncy, messy behemoth. It’s in the few instances where the breathlessly edited film slows down that the film really comes to life.

The almost-dystopian plot moves around with whiplash speed, nonlinearly, from 2044, 2058 and 2065 (did I miss any?) from location to location and involves a race to propel Earth to a new solar system because the sun is quickly either burning out or headed towards our planet (I wasn’t quite sure which). It’s a battle between the Digital Life group (where humans can “live,” albeit digitally after death) and the Moving Mountain Project which wants to save Earth (and move people into middle Earth, I think). The Chinese, of course, have all the best ideas.

A plot involving a father and daughter is the most poignant.

This is sci-fi blockbuster filmmaking at it most blustery with elements of Independence Day, Blade Runner, 2001, Top Gun Maverick, etc…

I did find the second half far more enjoyable than the first and a part of me wants to go back a rewatch it (I’ll take a Dramamine first) as well as catch the first film (currently streaming on Netflix). I just wish director Frant Gwo and his team of screenwriters had spent as much time developing characters as they did in creating the look of the film.

China has received 2 nominations for Zhang Yimou films, Ju Dou (1990, co-directed by Yang Fengliang) and Hero (2002). Yimou has the most submissions with 9. He was also nominated for Raise the Red Lantern, submitted by Hong Kong in 1991.

This is China’s 37th submission.

The Wandering Earth was released theatrically in North America on January 22, 2023 (including 31 IMAX screens). It is currently on VOD and the Blu-ray will be released December 19, 2023.

Vietnam – Glorious Ashes – Director: Bui Thac Chuyên

Bleakly beautiful or beautiful in its bleakness—perhaps both—Bui Thac Chuyên’s Glorious Ashes follows the intertwining lives of 3 Vietnamese women living on the Mekong Delta and trying to survive life’s tragedies. Based on short stories by Ngoc Tú Nguyen, we follow a shotgun marriage between a too-chatty gal and her fisherman husband who’s in love with another woman, so he stays on the water for long periods of time. The few times he returns he barely speaks to his wife. The woman he loves is happily married to another man, until tragedy strikes, and that man burns their home down…several times.
The third story is the most elusive and bizarre, involving a woman obsessed with the man who raped her many years ago when she was 12.

At times confusing and confounding, there is a visual power to Glorious Ashes in its depiction of fire and water…and women who do what they must to survive.

Vietnam has been nominated once in 1993 for The Scent of Green Papaya.

This is the country’s 20th submission.

Slovakia – Photophobia — Directors: Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík

Photophobia is another documentary-fiction hybrid. The 71-minute feature follows the precarious lives of a group of Ukrainians who have taken shelter in the abandoned subway tunnels of Kharkiv, the second most populous city in Ukraine (after Kiev) while Russia continuously bombs the area. The film’s main focus is on two small children (Nikita Tyshchenko and Viktoriia Mats) as they look for things to occupy their usually mundane time—except when the shelling going on above literally shakes the ground. Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík are the intrepid directors who put their own lives at risk to show us how these brave people are simply trying to survive.

The sad and scary thing is that Photophobia feels dystopian and yet it depicts exactly what is going on in Ukraine right now (as well as other parts of the world in one manner or another).

At one point in the film, one of the characters/figures is perusing an app on her phone that pinpoints exactly where the bombs above are going off. We’ve come so far technologically that we have apps for missiles and air strikes. Perhaps someone can create an app that banishes bloodshed and/or brokers peace? Anyone?

Slovakia has never been nominated.

This is Slovakia’s 27th submission.

Singapore — The Breaking Ice — Director: Anthony Chen

It gave me the giggles that after I wrote down my thoughts about Anthony Chen’s lyrical film, The Breaking Ice, I saw a blurb that faintly praised the work for not making the central relationships “more than they are.” Ironically, that is the one criticism I had about it. The film follows three very different twentysomethings going through the motions of their lives without really feeling much. I wanted more of a connection, in particular between the two men—not saying physical—although that would have been refreshing. I sensed an intimacy that coulda/shoulda been explored. Otherwise, this gorgeously shot feature, set in the cold, wintry city of Yanji, on China’s northern border is an engaging character study.

Nana (Zhou Dongyu, so good in China’s Oscar-nominated Better Days in 2019) is an apathetic tour guide. Xiao (a terrific Qu Chuxiao, star of The Wandering Earth) works in a Korean restaurant and longs to see the world. He has an ongoing flirtation with Nana. Enter city boy Haofeng (Lui Haoran), a mysterious figure who often talks about death. He and Nana hook up and before you can say Jules et Jim, the three are hanging out together. We get tiny bits of backstory, but not enough. The ending, especially for one character, is richly rewarding.

Singapore has never been nominated.

This is the third feature directed by Chen to be submitted after Ilo Ilo (2013) and Wet Season (2020).

This is Singapore’s 17th submission.

Strand plans on releasing The Breaking Ice in early 2024.

Morocco — The Mother of All Lies — Director: Asmae El Moudir

What begins as a confusing and confounding doc where miniature figures are used turns into a deeply personal and affecting film about trauma, secrets and lies, superstition, a quest to find out what happened to the filmmaker’s sister and a document of the horrific murders and injustices committed by regime trying to destroy the lower classes and then erase any history of their crimes.

Asmae El Moudir’s unique and ultimately absorbing doc begins with an exploration of the only photo she has of herself (or is it?) and slowly peels away the layers of deception and delusion perpetrated on her and her family mostly by her grandmother (described as “a dictator who tried to provoke everyone” and “an expert killjoy.”) She is also the centerpiece of the film, a cross between a fiercely protective matriarch, a steely witch and a victim of early abuse and heartache.

On June 20, 1981, a protest against the dramatic increase in the price of bread in Casablanca turned into a day of bloodshed where over 600 people were murdered and, later, more than 2000 people would be arrested and jailed. Grandma, in an attempt to save her family, locked them up and began a deliberate attempt to repress all memories of the ghastly events that happened.

The film meanders a bit but is also filled with deeply cathartic confrontations and a reveal about grandmother’s opposition to photos that has everything to do with trauma and superstition.

Morocco has not been nominated. This is their 19th submission.

Pakistan — In Flames — Director: Zarrar Kahn

Zarrar Kahn’s impressive debut feature, In Flames, is a psychological and supernatural thriller/social drama and yet another feature that depicts how the patriarchy, in certain cultures, command complete control over women.

Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) is a 25-year-old medical student whose grandfather has died, leaving her mother Fariah (Bakhtawar Mazhar) alone and at the mercy of mercenary relatives by marriage—specifically her devious uncle who deceives Fariah into signing everything over to him and then proceeds to take legal eviction action.

Meanwhile a series of bizarre incidents happen to Marian—and when a horrific tragedy occurs involving a crush, she is shaken to her core. But the film has loftier intentions that have to do with past trauma and ghosts that leads to a potent catharsis. The topsy turvy mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of Kahn’s film and the strongest aspect of it.

In Flames premiered at the Directors Fortnight section at Cannes.

Pakistan has never been nominated. Saim Sadiq’s Joyland made the short list last year.

This is their 12th submission.

Estonia – Smoke Sauna Sisterhood – Director: Anna Hints

Anna Hints’ Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a truly intense (sometimes difficult, for varying reasons), originally crafted documentary account of a group of women who get together in a sauna in the woods to be there for one another and help each other heal from the trauma in their lives. This Estonian practice is on the UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

One woman details her burgeoning same-sex attraction and how she confided in the friend she was attracted to who’s reaction was to tell her she was the “filthiest person I’d ever met,” and then shun her. And a final account of rape is absolutely devastating. Hints’ style is often a bit too arty, but whenever the women are telling their stories or simply being with one another, the film captivates.

Smoke been nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards.

Estonia has received one nomination in 2014 for Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines.

This is their 21st submission.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood opened at the IFC Center in NYC on November 24.

Uruguay – Family Album – Director: Guillermo Rocamora

The main focus of Guillermo Rocamora’s entertaining film Family Album is 18-year-old Manuel (Franco Rizzaro) who loves music and is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his future. His mother (Valeria Lois) wants him to have a vocation to fall back on. His father, César (Diego Cremonesi), is a former musician himself who is still living a bit of a nomadic and unstable life. As Manual begins to assemble a band, it is suggested he ask his father to join. He does and Manuel comes to regret it.

Rizzaro, both an actor and musician, has great charisma. The camera loves him and he’s a terrific singer to boot.

Cremonesi excels as a man trying to recapture his lost youth. The problem is that Rocamora’s script insists on demonizing him to the point where he becomes a one-dimensional boob.

While the father/son exploration fuels the film, it seems to run out of steam (and nuance) about 2/3 of the way through, leading towards an unsatisfying (non-) ending.

The main song at the heart of the film, “Non Soy Yo,” is wonderfully catchy and in a perfect world, would be in Oscar consideration.

Uruguay has never been nominated.

This is their 23rd submission.

The Rest (all have something to offer)

Norway – Songs of Earth – Director: Margreth Olin

Margreth Olin’s striking doc, Songs of Earth, is the kind of movie made for the big screen where it can sweep you away in its depiction of the vastness of nature—Olin loves to pull back the camera to show just how much of a spec humans really are. Framed around personal stories from her parents’ lives and their lineage living in the Oldedalen valley in Nordfjord, the film ponders mortality and makes a potent case for respecting nature. Executive producers include Liv Ullmann and Wim Wenders.

Norway has garnered 6 nominations, no wins. The last nomination was 2021 for Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World.

This is Norway’s 45th submission and the 2nd selection directed by Olin (her film Angel was submitted in 2010).

Hungary – Four Souls Of Coyote – Director: Áron Gauder

“Nothing is Eternal but the Earth and the mountains”
–logline for Four Souls of Coyote.

Áron Gauder’s Four Souls Of Coyote uniquely takes indigenous folklore, adds a dash of Judeo-Christian teachings and introduces a humdinger of a twist to the creation story. The film blends both 2D and 3D animation for a stunning viewing experience.

Four Souls opens in the present day, where Native Americans are protesting an oil pipeline crew about to decimate their ancestral land. A wise grandfather begins to tell the story of creation, where man is just a minuscule part of the world (as opposed to usual version where he’s pretty much King) but has managed to destroy so much of it. An Old Man creates the animals via clay from the oceans floor while humans are created by a devious coyote with 4 souls (lives). Conflict arises and man shows his true nature (imagine). Also, late in the film we are privy to a parallel creation that is keen and rather devious.

As a plea and a warning for humans to reverse their ways and try and live in harmony with nature, Four Souls must be commended. It’s also a striking film.

Hungary has been nominated 10 times with two wins (István Szabó’s Mephisto in 1981 and László Nemes’s Son of Saul in 2015) Szabó has the most Oscar submissions with 5.

This is Hungary’s 59th submission.

Costa Rica — I Have Electric Dreams — Director: Valentina Maurel

Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams captures the volatility of a family steeped in a culture that solves problems through argument and violence (anyone growing up in an Italian-Catholic family or anything-Catholic family might relate). The film centers on 16-year-old Eva (Daniela Marín Navarro), a surly, angst-ridden young girl (and what teen isn’t?) who, with her younger sister, is trying to navigate the aftermath of a divorce between her parents, Martin (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez) and Anca (Vivian Rodriguez). Eva is more drawn to her tempestuous, ego-centric artist father. She is also exploring her bourgeoning sexuality, embarking on a tryst with her father’s bestie, a man at least twice her age.

I Have Electric Dreams contemplates who we are as human beings—our tendency towards rage and violence. It is also an engaging, if perverse, look at a father-daughter relationship.

Costa Rica has yet to receive a nomination.
This is their 12th submission.

Peru – The Erection of Toribio Bardelli — Director: Adrián Saba

Writer-director Adrián Saba has made a droll and darkly comedic tale of a father and his three off-beat children, living in Lima and mourning the loss of the family matriarch with The Erection of Toribio Bardelli.

The title is amusing, if slightly misleading since the titular patriarch (Gustavo Bueno), is indeed in a tizzy about not being to achieve an erection but the heart of the film centers on his three children. Sara (Gisela Ponce de León) is the annoying blind daughter, Luz (Michele Abascal) the aspiring writer and Silvestre (Rodrigo Sánchez Patiño), the alcoholic actor-wannabe.

Saba creates a quartet of compelling characters but doesn’t seem to know what to do with them, so we end up with a slight portrait where songs and montages take the place of a fully developed narrative.

The most interesting storyline belongs to the Silvestre character who decides to visit the mother of the boy whose heart saved his life. But even this segment is undercooked. (I’d actually love to see a film about these two characters).

The movie is still worth a look its excellent performances.

Peru has been nominated once for The Milk of Sorrow in 2009.

Saba’s film The Cleaner was submitted in 2013.

This is their 30th submission.

Burkina Faso — Sira — Director: Apolline Traoré

Apolline Traoré’s Sira is to be commended for a number of reasons. Firstly, it offers a female perspective on atrocities currently being committed in the Burkina Faso area. It also dares to show an Islamic extremist grappling with his attraction to men which, of course, torments him.

Traoré is to be applauded for not wavering in brutally depicting just how women are dehumanized—raped, tortured and basically treated like slaves to powerful men who feel like they have some divine right to do so. The film captures the insane hypocrisy of these humans committing such horrors and calling themselves men of God.

Sira begins with the 17-year-old titular character (a committed Nafissatou Cissé) and her family caravanning to meet her intended husband. She is Muslim, he is Christian, which does not sit well with her father’s good friend Moustapha (Mike Danon). Enter a group of militants who kill almost everyone in the caravan and kidnap Sira. The evil leader, Yere, rapes Sira and leaves her for dead in the desert. The film then takes its sweet time as Sira does her best to survive, hungry, pregnant and desperate.

Sira is quite intense at times but suffers from too much meandering. At 2 hours, It could easily lose 30 minutes. And time seems to pass quite quickly in the narrative which is jarring.

This is Burkina Faso’s second submission. The first was not nominated.

Kenya – Mvera – Director: Daudi Anguka

“We live in a society where the majority suffer for the few to thrive.”
–the evil character, Thabiti in Mvera

The wildest plots emerge from some this year’s submissions—this one based in fact, which is truly scary. Director Daudi Anguka’s Mvera takes one wacky journey. The titular character, inspired by a real Kenyan activist and played magnificently by Linah Sande, takes her fate into her own hands and uncovers a 15-year-operating organ trafficking ring. Mvera is on a quest to leave her small village and broaden her horizons and find her long-departed mother in America.

Each year a prominent and wealthy local named Thabiti sponsors two handfuls of young men and women to venture abroad in search of their dream jobs. Mvera is not selected but in the opening moments steals another girl’s passport and bus ticket and stealthily embarks on the trip. But she soon finds that Thabiti’s intentions are not only deceitful but murderous.

Mvera is tonally all over the place, has its share of unbelievable moments (it takes 15 years of never hearing back from any family members for the townspeople to realize something might be afoot?) and there is some very broad, borderline comical acting (sometimes the film plays like a twisted version of the already twisted film, Thoroughly Modern Millie), but it’s also crazy enjoyable and Sande’s fully-committed performance keeps you enraptured throughout.

Kenya has never been nominated. This is their 8th submission.

Mexico — Tótem – Director: Lila Avilés

In Lila Avilés’ striking and meditative film Tótem, the horror of the impending loss of a loved one is framed, in large part, from the POV of Sol (Naima Senties) a 9-year-old girl and her large, messy family who have assembled for what will probably be the last birthday celebration of Sol’s 30-year-old father Tona (Mateo García Elizondo). Avilés’ spends a bit too much time on the young girls (Sol has a younger cousin) and not enough on developing the family members. And I do get that this is a life-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-child film and yet, the adults prove vastly more interesting.

Also, the decision to barely see Tona for most of the film is a tricky one. On the one hand it’s interesting to just see glimpses of him while we are told how much he is beloved by others. On the other hand, Tona proves to be such a fascinating figure when we finally do get to spend some time with him (in large part because García Elizondo is such a charismatic actor) we also mourn having such little time with him. Perhaps that’s the point. The film did stay with me for quite a bit after it ended, and it might stay with AMPAS voters as well…

Mexico has been nominated 9 times, winning once for Roma in 2018. The nomination before that was in 2010 for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful.

This is Mexico’s 56th submission.

Janus Films/Sideshow will release Tótem in theaters on January 26, 2024.

Latvia — My Freedom – Director: Ilze Kunga-Melgaile

Based on the true story of Polish-born Latvian activist Ita Kozakeviča, Ilze Kunga-Melgaile’s My Freedom chronicles Ita’s heroic journey in helping Soviet Latvia gain independence from the Baltic States in 1988, one year before the wall fell. An excellent Erica Eglija plays the driven and fearless journalist turned politician who, besides fighting for her country’s independence, must also deal with the deeply flawed men in her life, including her husband, who may be a KGB spy. My Freedom is an admirable film reminiscent of the female-driven American movies of the 1970s.

Latvia has yet to receive a nomination.
This is their 15th submission.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – Excursion – Director: Una Gunjak

You ever find yourself confronted with something you didn’t necessarily want to be confronted with, so you lie about it? It’s just a natural reaction. And then sometimes you feel the need to compound that lie with another, even bigger one. In Una Gunjak’s feature debut, Excursion, the lead teen character, Iman (Asja Zara Lagumdzija) does just that, first to validate a rumor that she’s had sex with an older middle schooler and then to take it one step further by pretending she’s pregnant, which brands her as the school pariah. When confronted to give her reason for lying, she can only dead stare at the person asking.

Feeling confused and behaving erratically are not atypical for teens, especially those crushing on others. And the film gets all of this right, but it never quite goes far enough in its exploration or the reactions. Parents complain, administration behaves fearfully, students bully—all typical for our times, but the stakes never feel high enough, so I never felt fully engaged.

What I did find most interesting was the constant reference to Bosnia’s Serbian-majority city Banja Luka and an incident where seven girls, some as young as 13, allegedly all got pregnant on a school trip. (this was reported here in 2014—google it) That story, true or not, would have made a more compelling narrative.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s submissions have yielded 2 nominations and one win, No Man’s Land (2001). The last nomination was in 2020 for Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida?

This is the country’s 23rd submission.

Armenia – Amerikatsi – Director: Michael A. Goorjian

I usually love a good genre blend and writer-director-actor Michael A. Goorjian certainly has good intentions with his comedy-drama, Amerikatsi, but the mix doesn’t quite work in this story of a naive American genocide survivor (Goorjian) who returns to Soviet Armenia and gets thrown in jail for the most ridiculous of reasons, under the Stalin regime. Part Rear Window (yay!), part Life is Beautiful (boo!), part Midnight Express (yikes!), the film is too tonally challenged to truly be moving or that involving. And there is no payoff in either the hopeful or hopeless direction. The one positive that holds the film together is Goorjian the actor, who creates a most sympathetic central figure. Goorjian the filmmaker is to be congratulated for giving voice to survivors of genocide, and in particular the horrific crimes against the Armenian people, over 100 years ago, that certain cultures would prefer to forget, or worse, deny.

Armenia has not been nominated. This is their 13th submission.

Variance Films released Amerikatsi earlier this year. You can rent the film on Vudu.

Mongolia – City of Wind – Director: Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir

Shy and gifted student Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) is a teenage shaman who lives in both the spiritual and real world, not appearing all that comfortable in either. He soon meets a girl, who initially has no interest in him, but that changes and soon his sweet but rebellious nature begins to manifest in his journey towards self-discovery.

Mongolian director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir subtly but effectively captures a generational clash, via 17-year-old Ze’s story and especially in a series of classroom scenes where a tyrannical teacher is in charge. Near the end of the film there is a wonderfully fulfilling scene that anyone who has ever had a mean teacher will relish.

The film is buoyed by Bold-Erdene’s subtle but endearing performance.

Mongolia has not received a nomination.

This is their 8th submission.

Egypt – Voy! Voy! Voy! – Director: Omar Hilal

Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy! starts out as a comedy, one that feels seemingly inappropriate until you realize it was inspired by true events (not really making it any less inappropriate, just based in truth). And as the film progresses, it turns rather dark, then toes that comedy/drama line.

Voy! follows Hassan (Muhammad Farrag), a security guard desperate to leave his impoverished existence for more opportunities (in Europe) so when he gets wind of a blind soccer team about to play for the World Cup, he pretends to be blind himself. But as the film progresses and lies are compounded, it turns out that he is not the only deceitful person on the team.

The film reminded me of those feel-good indie movies of yore where characters did crazy and desperate things for selfish reasons but then came clean and learned a lesson. Voy!’s lesson might surprise you.

Incidentally, ‘Voy’ is Spanish for ‘Here I Come!’ which is what the blind players shout to one another.

Egypt has never been nominated despite submitting 36 times, second only to Portugal for the most submissions without a nod.

Namibia — Under the Hanging Tree — Director: John Katjavivi

Namibia’s very first submission is Perivi John Katjavivi’s highly ambitious third feature, Under the Hanging Tree, which spins a stylized modern yet mystical/supernatural murder mystery of sorts.

Set in a rural desert town, the super-cryptic film begins with an old man making a fire and speaking ritual incantations that appear to summon ancestors to avenge past crimes. The film then ponderously shifts focus to a police detective (Girley Jazama) and her semi-bumbling partner investigating a case involving cattle carcasses which leads to a farmer’s hanging. (often the film feels like The Coens’ Fargo during these scenes.)

All this leads to the very strange wife of the farmer, Eva (Roya Diehl, channeling a stoic demon) who apparently has familial links to a Mengele-like Nazi. That notion alone could have been mined for some intense thriller-like work, but instead the film continues to bask in a maddeningly experimental manner.

Some familiarity with Namibian history and its colonial genocidal past helps in understanding the film but only to a point.

Katjavivi has an interesting filmmaking style, with fascinating framing and camerawork, but his narrative is too muddled and sometimes even campy. Was I supposed to laugh hysterically when the farmer was choking and his wife did nothing to help? What about a poisoning where the poisoner breaks into song?

All that said, it’s certainly a fascinating work and Katjavivi is a director to watch.

This is Namibia’s very first submission.

Panama – Tito, Margot & Me – Directors: Mercedes Arias and Delfina Vidal

Mercedes Arias and Delfina Vidal’s Tito, Margot & Me is an admirable docu-romance with very little bite—which makes sense since it was co-directed by Tito Arias’s first cousin (once removed). The film sets out to dispel negative rumors and tell the saga of a great love story between celebrated British ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn and Panamanian politico Roberto “Tito” Arias.

He hailed from a prominent family of politicians (his father was President) and left his first wife and 3 children to marry Fonteyn in 1955. In 1959, the couple were charged with attempted gun smuggling (he was alleged to have been part of a coup against the then-current President), both were arrested, and she was deported back to the UK.

The doc contains interviews with surviving family members who tend to lean on the side of tribute vs. gossip, which is all well and good, but they also seem to want to rewrite the history of Arias’s many dalliances with other women during his marriage. In addition, Tito’s daughte refuses to answer a question about the fact that Arias’s mistress, who was living in the same home with him when he died, committed suicide that very same day (although the filmmakers should be given credit for including the moment.)

Tito was also a bit of a mystery figure when it came to his political dealings. He apparently worked for the British intelligence service. Margot continued to dance, including her famous partnership with Rudolf Nureyev. And, unlike say Prince Rainier (with Grace Kelly), Tito seemed to have no issue with his wife’s continuing her career.

The idea here is that love triumphed over fame, politics and even infidelity, which I have no issue with, but let’s not attempt to alter documented history either. (although that does seem to be the world we are living in).

The film is worth a look for the many photographs and great footage of the two. And it made me want to seek out Fonteyn’s autobiography to read her version of these stories.

Panama has never been nominated. Abner Benaim’s Plaza Catedral made the short list in 2021.

Arias and Vidal’s Box 25 was submitted in 2015.

This is the country’s 10th submission.

South Africa — Music is My Life — Director: Phumelelo Mbele

Music is my Life is a compelling documentary about the incomparable Joseph Shabalala, founded of the internationally renowned a-cappella music and dance group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The award-winning songs drew heavily from traditional Zulu music (specifically isicathamiya and mbube) and from dreams Shabalala experienced. LBM would go on to work with Paul Simon (most notably on his famed album, Graceland), Dolly Parton and Michael Jackson and would put South African music on the worldwide map. Shabalala slyly sowed anti-Apartheid messages into his songs of hope and community.

The inspiring saga of the success of his troupe counterpoints the personal tragedies the Shabalala family would endure. Director Phumelelo Mbele weaves it all together understandably leaning more towards the music than the scandals, but it is those shocking and mysterious murders, that stay with you and make you wish the filmmaker had investigated further.

South Africa has been nominated 2 times and won for Tsotsi in 2005.

This is their 19th submission.

Senegal — Banel & Adama — Director: Ramata-Toulaye Sy

Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s debut feature takes place in a little Senegalese village where superstitions run high and men are expected to honor tradition while women must do as they’re told. But the young, newly married titular characters Banel (Khady Mane) and Adama (Mamadou Diallo) are deeply in love and want to live on their own. He is next in line to be to be chief of the village and she is supposed to be pregnant already.

Banal, in particular, is fiercely her own person and does not like to follow set rules. When a drought begins killing off their cattle, and soon, members of the population, Adama must come to terms with the notion that he might be cursing the village.

Mane delivers an unflinching performance as the driven Banel who go to great lengths to fight to have Adama all to herself.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t end as much as drift away, which is very frustrating because its heroine deserved a solid third act.

Senegal has not been nominated. This is their 5th submission.

Lithuania – Slow – Director: Marija Kavtaradzė

Marija Kavtaradzė’s Slow, is a sweet exploration of a couple navigating the reveal that one of them is asexual. Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė) is a sexually-liberated dancer who also teaches classes for deaf dancers. Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas) is a sign interpreter she meets and the chem is off the charts. As they get to know each other, Dovydas confides to Elena that he is asexual and they embark on a relationship, that is both respectful and messy, which could also describe the film.

Lithuania has never been nominated. This is their 16th submission.

Sweden — Opponent – Director Milad Alami

Milad Alami’s Opponent is an admirable film that left me feeling so discontent—and that might be the aim. The narrative centers on Iman, a closeted gay wrestler (a towering performance by Payman Maadi) who flees Iran for Sweden. He and his wife and children are seeking asylum. The film shows the horrific situations faced by refugees in gritty fashion. The homophobia inherent in the culture is despicable but seen as a just reason to punish, even murder people.

The film only skirts the exploration of Maadi’s character’s queerness, which is frustrating. So, we have another violent macho self-hatred-born-of-fear-and-sexually-repressed-culture character study where the wife and kids matter but any other relationship doesn’t. I found that exhausting as well as the lack of catharsis for the man we’ve been following for 2 hours.

Sweden has been nominated 16 times and won 3 Oscars, all Ingmar Bergman Films (The Virgin Spring in 1960, Through a Glass Darkly in 1961 and Fanny and Alexander in 1983). Nine submissions were directed by Bergman. Jan Troell’s films have been submitted 5 times with 3 noms.

The country’s last nomination was in 2017 for Ruben Östlund’s The Square.

Sweden has submitted 63 times.

Opponent has played a number of LGBTQ Festivals in the US.

Iran — The Night Guardian —  Director: Reza Mirkarimi

For some reason The Night Guardian was virtually impossible for me to get hold of and at first, I thought it might have something to do with the bit of controversy over the Iranian Independent Filmmaker Association requesting the Academy to find an alternate because it was chosen by the government-controlled Farabi Cinema Foundation (reasons having to do with many Iranian filmmakers being persecuted).

But the film is a fairly simple story of a rather simple man who is manipulated and used because of his naivete. It’s almost too simple to be selected as the best a country has to offer. The Reza Mirkamari-directed work wants to be an homage to Italian neo-realism but is too safe (sometime so obvious as to never want to piss off the government) to achieve anything beyond being a great showcase for its young star, Touraj Alvand, who has tremendous appeal.

Iran has won twice, both for Asghar Farhadi films (A Separation in 2011 and The Salesman in 2016, his films were also chosen three other times). Iran has been nominated a total of 3 times.

Majid Majidi has had 6 films submitted and was nominated in 1998 for Children of Heaven.

Mirkarimi has had 3 of his films submitted, none have been selected.

This is the country’s 29th submission.

Iceland – Godland – Director: Hlynur Pálmason

Another film critics did backflips and cartwheels for is Hlynur Pálmason’s meditative, beautifully shot, but seemingly interminable film, Godland, about a 19th century Danish priest en route to a remote area of Iceland to build a new church. While I appreciate Pálmason’s scope and ambition and admire his austere and contemplative style, I found the experience to be more of a slog than the transfixing epic it should have been. We have witnessed the theme of man’s inhumanity to man in a Godless world, countless times onscreen (many westerns) done in a far more compelling manner. By the time our protagonist’s rage is unleashed on his nemesis (the character that personifies our cruel, envious, ignorant world), much of the potency of the narrative has dissipated.

Iceland has been nominated once in 1991 for Children of Nature.

This is their 44th submission.

Godland was released by Janus Films in early 2023. The film is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and can be rented on Prime.

Bolivia — The Visitor — Director: Martin Boulocq

Martin Boulocq’s fourth feature, The Visitor, is a subtle and sometimes moving character study of a middle-aged man, Humberto (Enrique Aráoz), newly freed from prison who wants desperately to reconnect with his daughter but is at the mercy of her highly influential and unforgiving Evangelical grandparents.

While I appreciated the exceptional performance of Aráoz and the searing indictment of extreme Evangelical power, the ending proved incredibly unsatisfying on all levels, taking away from the film’s potency. If you are going to slowly sweep us up in the world of this downtrodden but hopeful protagonist, then there needs to be some kind of payoff.

The film premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Fest, where it won best international screenplay competition.

Bolivia has never been nominated.

This is their 16th submission.

Yemen — The Burdened – Director: Amr Gamal

Amr Gamal’s stark and straightforward film, The Burdened, is based on a true story about a middle-aged couple living in Aden, Yemen, post-civil war, who are in dire financial straits and have three children. When husband Ahmed (Khaled Hamdan) finds out his wife Isra’a (Abeer Mohammed) is pregnant, he immediately wants her to have an abortion. But no one will perform the procedure. There is debate as to whether an abortion within 120 days is in keeping with Islamic law and they try to persuade a doctor friend of Isra’a to do it, despite the fact that it goes against her beliefs. Abortion dramas are not rare, but we hardly ever see depictions of people of a certain age making the decision.

Yemen has yet to be nominated. This is their 3rd submission.

Albania – Alexander – Alexander Gruda

Alexander Gruda is a gregarious 69-year-old man who is a doorman for one of the Trump Hotels in NYC. He is also the person who, in order to escape punishment and/or death by the hands of the Communist Albanian government in 1990, hijacked a warship, and led it to safe harbor in Yugoslavia. A mechanic with the Albanian navy, Gruda gathered his family and 16 others. They were fired upon and there was one casualty, his young daughter. As hero stories go, this one is pretty extraordinary. The film, directed by Ardit Sadiku’, is arresting at times, especially when Gruda and others tell the courageous and ultimately tragic story. It would make a much better narrative feature.

Albania has yet to be nominated.

This is their 16th submission.

Serbia — The Duke and the Poet — Director: Milorad Milinkovic

Before watching Milorad Milinkovic’s historical drama The Duke and the Poet (also titled Because My Thoughts are Struggling), I highly recommend doing some research on Serbian Prince Mihailo Obrenovic who ruled at a very young age and then, after some years in exile, came back to power in his late 30s to mid-40s, wanting to liberate the Balkan peoples. It might also help to learn a bit about the Ottomans takeover of Serbia and the subsequent battles with the Turks for their independence. In the midst of this, in 1868, a plot is hatched to assassinate the Prince. I paused the film early on and did my Googling. I was still somewhat perplexed by the narrative but knowing some history sure helped.

Milinkovic’s captures the period well and stages some compelling moments—most of the highlights involve the captivating Luka Grbic as the youngest Radovanović brother (of 3) involved in the fatal conspiracy—but the end result is a bit underwhelming.

Serbia has never been nominated but did make the short list once in 2007 for The Trap.

This is the country’s 30th submission, which include the celebrated Cabaret Balkan in 1998.

Saudi Arabia — Alhamour H. A. — Director: Abdulelah Alqurashi

I would venture to say that filmmaker Abdulelah Alqurashi is a big Martin Scorsese fan since his sophomore feature, Alhamour H. A., could be called an homage to The Wolf of Wall Street.

Inspired by the real rags-to-riches story of Hamour Sawwa, the biggest fraudster in the history of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the film, set in the early 2000s, centers on Hamed (Fahad Alqahtani) a down and out security guard hoping to make it big, no matter the means. He aligns himself with some shady characters and a simple phone card selling venture turns into a
mega financially successful enterprise, albeit a not completely legal one.

There are some interesting and well-crafted moments and the scenes with his second wife (Fatima AlBanawi, having a blast) are amusing but the subject just doesn’t lend itself to the sweeping Scorsese-esque style Alqurashi is attempting to replicate.

Saudi Arabia has submitted 7 times with no nomination.

Malaysia – Tiger Stripes – Amanda Nell Eu

Amanda Nell Eu’s Cannes’ prize-winning film, Tiger Stripes made headlines when its director denounced Malaysia’s decision to censor her film for local release there. “I do not stand behind the cut that will be shown in local cinemas […] the film that will be shown in local cinemas is not the film that we made, and it is not the film that won the Grand Prize of the Critics Week in Cannes.” Eu was not allowed to disclose what scenes were actually cut. I was able to see the film she intended.

The bizarre body horror film centers on a 12-year-old girl, who gets her period and is then bullied relentlessly by her friends. She begins to morph into a creature. The sometimes alienating, heavy-on-metaphor narrative owes a lot to Brian DePalma’s Carrie but never goes far enough to pack the punch it should pack. Not for me, anyway. Eu is to be given credit for her bold criticism of Malaysia’s moralistic and patriarchal view of women. This alone could help it make the short list.

Malaysia has not been Oscar nominated. This is their 8th submission.

Croatia – Traces – Director: Dubravka Turić

Best I can say about Dubravka Turić’s feature debut, Traces, is that she delves into interesting subject matter and has cast a terrific actress in the lead. Marija Škaričić plays Ana, a woman dealing with an autoimmune disease and a sickly father. She is also an anthropologist fascinated with mystical symbolism and historic traces left on ancient tombstones as well as Mirila, where two stones are placed at the head and foot of the dead, thus measuring the body.

The film is a slog (except for a few moments with a very brash friend) until Ana meets up with an old school friend played by Nikša Butijer. That one scene shows how potent the film could have been.

Croatia has yet to receive a nomination.

This is their 33rd submission.

Paraguay — The Last Runway 2, Commando Yaguareté — Directors: Armando Aquino & Mauricio Rial

It took two directors to make The Last Runway 2, Commando Yaguareté (Armando Aquino & Mauricio Rial) and it still plays like a tolerable 1970s TV crime drama with cardboard characters, stilted dialogue and badly choreographed fight scenes/shootouts. But I have to admit, the film is still quite entertaining and is trying to make an important statement against drug trafficking in Paraguay (and the world).

The movie is a sequel (one of two in the race, along with China) to the popular film, The Last Runway (currently streaming on Netflix) and brings back several characters including the tough-as-nails head of investigations, Betty Jara (Andrea Quattrocchi). One of her agents has been kidnapped and she must negotiate a prisoner exchange to get him back. Suffice to say it does not go as planned and the Yaguareté team must re-band to fix the mess. Bruno Sosa Bofinger has a mustache twirling blast as the villainous Dante.

This is Paraguay’s 7th submission with no nomination.

Columbia — A Male (Un varón) – Director: Fabian Hernández

With A Male, Fabian Hernández has created a stark but tentative doc-like look at young men living in poverty in Bogota, Colombia, with little choice but to turn to violence to survive. The film centers on one teen Carlos (Dilan Felipe Ramirez Espitia) forced to live in a shelter while his mom is serving time, and his sister works the streets. There is a very poignant scene involving Carlos having a conversation with his mother. I wish the film had more intense moments like that one.

Hernández focuses too much time on the mundane. Even a scene where it appears Carlos is being groomed for sex work doesn’t feel bold enough. Once character describes the streets as having tentacles that pull you in. A Male is a bit too slight to allow us to feel that. And there is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment involving lipstick that hints at the boy’s possible queerness, but that is also never explored except to also hint at his pretending to lose his virginity to a prostitute. The film implies when it should boldly state.

Columbia’s submissions have received one nomination, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent in 2015.

This is their 32nd submission.

Cinema Tropical will release A Male for a one-week run at Cinema Village in NYC on December 8 with additional screenings scheduled in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., dates TBA.

Yeah, no. Not my cup of movie tea

Portugal – Bad Living – Director: João Canijo

Portuguese director João Canijo has created two films set in a seaside hotel, one, Bad Living, that focuses on the family that owns the establishment and its companion film, Living Bad, that follows the guests at the same hotel, same time. Ambitious for certain. And intriguing. Bad Living, this year’s submission, centers on the dysfunctional owners, specifically 3 generations of women and their cousins/workers. I can imagine this frustrating and indulgent work will have its champions. Alas, I am not one of them.

Bad Living’s main focus is on a deeply depressed, bi-polar mother, her seemingly love-starved daughter and the severe and downright mean grandmother. There are two other, possibly lesbian, extraneous characters. And for over two unrelentingly grim hours we are forced into their cruel and vicious world, that is when we can actually see what is going on.

Canijo loves to sit his camera down for interminable periods for long and extreme-long shots, resulting in a need to squint to see what is going on. I’ve noticed a number of films, lately, basking in the extreme long-shot, failing to realize the real effects on the viewer—boredom.

The film wants to invoke Bergman with its ‘I love you, but I refuse to show it OR can’t show it OR don’t want to show it’ sadistic narrative. Better to stream Autumn Sonata for a truly extraordinary look at a painful mother/daughter relationship—one we can actually empathize with.

Near the end of Bad Living, tragedy strikes, and it is quite reminiscent of the sorrowful denouement in Woody Allen’s Interiors (his homage to Bergman). The difference is that when this terrible moment occurs, it was near-impossible to see, and once I realized what had happened, I felt relief—relief that a certain character was put out of her and MY misery, but also relief because I knew the end credits were moments away.

Canijo has had three of his films submitted. Manoel de Oliveira has had 8 of his films submitted.

Portugal has never been nominated or made the short list despite 40 submissions. They currently hold the record for the most submissions without a single nomination.

Poland — The Peasants — Directors: DK & Hugh Welchman

Yes, DK & Hugh Welchman’s The Peasants does indeed push the boundaries of animation, as the head of the deciding committee stated when there was outrage that Agnieszka Holland’s magnificent (but controversial) migrant drama Green Border was overlooked. What no one seems to want to mention is that the gorgeous live-action-meets-animation aspect doesn’t feel appropriate to the story–a lovely little misogynistic fairytale based on Nobel prize winning author Władysław Reymont’s classic 1905 novel where the lead female is called a whore repeatedly, horrifically mistreated, raped by the man she loves and then banished from the village. I can see how some see the film as a story about mob mentality–and it is that too, but it does enjoy reveling in the nasty depiction.

The film’s co-director is female—which makes the blatant misogyny the more bizarre. And there never any real emotional release for our protag either.

This choice, as I mentioned early on, reeks of political maneuvering and/or coercion and speaks volumes about their selection committee.

Poland has been nominated 13 times, winning for Ida in 2014. The country’s first nod was for Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water in 1963 and its most recent was last year for Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO.

Andrzej Wajda holes the record of submissions and nominations with 9 and 4 respectively. He was nominated for The Promised Land (1975), The Maids of Wilko (1979), Man of Iron (1981) and Katyń (2007).

This is Poland’s 55th submission.

Sony Pictures Classics will release The Peasants in theaters for one week on December 8, 2023, and then for a run in 2024.

Cameroon — Half Heaven — Director: Enah Johnscott

Enah Johnscott’s Half Heaven is an exploration of one’s man’s tenacious need to spread the gospels. The film centers on a preacher (Seehofer Roland) who sets out to a dangerous area of Cameroon to convert the Mboko people to Christianity. Along the way he encounters a gaggle of sinners which include thieves, prostitutes, murderers and your general heathens.

Unfortunately, the quality of the filmmaking, from the editing to the camerawork to the sound mixing is not great. The film is in Cameroonian Pidgin English and the version I was sent had no subtitles which made it difficult to understand much of the dialogue (except when the preacher spoke).

While obviously well-intentioned, it was a rather repetitive and maddening two hours.

This is Cameroon’s 6th submission and Johnscott’s second (The Fisherman’s Diary in 2020)

The country has not been nominated.

—
There were three films initially submitted that were not included in the final list. I did see one of them, which was quite good.

Hong Kong – A Light Never Goes Out – Director: Anastasia Tsang

Hong Kong cinema has suffered since the Chinese took over in 1997 and stripped it of its singular talent, with any government opposing artists basically being silenced (here’s looking at you Venezuela). Anastasia Tsang’s debut feature, A Light Never Goes Out, is a tribute to Hong Kong’s radiant neon signs that were once a bright symbol of the city’s propulsive energy but has been replaced by less expensive LEDs, quite the statement wrapped in a story of loss, heartache and healing. Celebrated Taiwanese actress Sylvia Change plays a newly widowed woman whose husband was a neon sign maker. To honor him, she sets about to fulfill has dying wish. The film is steeped in sentiment (the sight of a neon sign near the end had me a bit weepy) but the statement it’s making is pretty clear.

Hong Kong has been nominated 3 times, most recently in 2020 with Derek Tsang’s Better Days, with no wins.

This was Hong Kong’s 42nd submission.

My Personal Top 15

Italy – Io capitano
Spain – Society of the Snow
North Macedonia – Housekeeping for Beginners
Moldova – Thunders
Switzerland – Thunder
Ukraine – 20 Days in Mariupol
Slovenia – Riders
Philippines – The Missing
South Korea – Concrete Utopia
Finland – Fallen Leaves
Czechia – Brothers
Bhutan – The Monk and the Gun
Germany – The Teacher’s Lounge
France – The Taste of Things
Tunisia – Four Daughters

My Runners-up

Denmark – The Promised Land
Israel – Seven Blessings
Bulgaria – Blaga’s Lesson
Turkey – About Dry Grasses
Nepal – Halkara

Short List Predictions

UK – The Zone of Interest
Spain – Society of the Snow
Germany – The Teacher’s Lounge
France – The Taste of Things
Ukraine – 20 Days in Mariupol
Japan – Perfect Days
Finland – Fallen Leaves
Tunisia – Four Daughters
Denmark – The Promised Land
Mexico – Tótem
Turkey – About Dry Grasses
Italy – Io capitano
Venezuela – The Shadow of the Sun
Iceland – Godland
Malaysia – Tiger Stripes
Australia – Shayda

Possible
Poland – The Peasants
Pakistan – In Flames
Bulgaria – Blaga’s Lesson
Nigeria – Mami Wata
Chile – The Settlers
Argentina – The Delinquents

STATS

Country with the most nominations / wins

France 38 noms, 12 wins (3 honorary), 68 subs
Italy 29 noms, 14 wins (3 honorary), 67 subs
Germany 21 noms, 4 wins, 64 subs (includes East Germany)
Spain 20 noms, 4 wins, 66 subs
Japan 17 noms, 5 wins (3 honorary), 67 subs
Russia/Soviet Union 16 noms, 4 wins, 53 subs (combined)
Sweden 16 noms, 3 wins, 63 subs
Denmark 14 noms, 4 wins, 61 subs
Poland 13 noms, 1 win, 55 subs.
Hungary 10 noms, 2 wins, 59 subs
Czechia (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic) —9 noms, 3 wins,
53 subs (all combined)
Mexico, 9 nom, 1 win, 56 subs
Argentina 8 noms, 2 wins, 50 subs
Netherlands 7 noms, 3 wins, 56 subs
Canada 7 noms, 1 win, 49 subs

Nominations with no wins

Israel 10 noms, no wins (record)
Belgium 8 noms, no wins
Norway 6 noms, no wins
Yugoslavia, 6 noms, no wins
Greece, 5 noms, no wins

Submissions with no nominations

Portugal 40 subs, no nom (record)
Egypt 36 subs, no noms
Phillippines 34 subs, no noms
Bulgaria, 34 subs, no noms
Venezuela 33 subs no noms
Croatia 33 subs, no noms
Serbia, 30 subs, no noms
Thailand, 30 subs, no noms
Turkey 30 subs, no noms
Slovakia, 27 subs, no noms
Slovenia 27 subs, no noms
Indonesia, 25 subs, no noms

THEMES

Man’s Inhumanity to Man (evil patriarchy)

South Korea –Concrete Utopia
Denmark — The Promised Land
Italy — Io capitano
UK — The Zone of Interest
Moldova — Thunders
Switzerland — Thunder
Venezuela — The Shadow of the Sun
Bulgaria — Blaga’s Lesson
Ukraine — 20 Days in Mariupol
Ireland — In the Shadow of Beirut
Canada – Rojek
Slovakia — Photophobia
Morocco — The Mother of All Lies
Chile – The Settlers
Indonesia — Autobiography
Sudan—Goodbye Julia
Burkina Faso — Sira
Kenya – Mvera
Armenia – Amerikatsi
Sweden — Opponent
Iceland – Godland
Malaysia—Tiger Stripes
Serbia—The Duke and the Poet
The Netherlands — Sweet Dreams
Luxembourg: The Last Ashes
Georgia — Citizen Saint
Namibia — Under the Hanging Tree
South Africa — Music is My Life
Cameroon – Half Heaven
Nigeria – Mami Wata
Bangladesh — No Ground Beneath My Feet

Trauma / Superstition / Religious Zealotry / Repression

Belgium — Omen
Senegal — Banel & Adama
The Philippines — The Missing
Montenegro — Sirin
Switzerland — Thunder
Georgia — Citizen Saint
Tunisia — Four Daughters
Canada – Rojek
Morocco — The Mother of All Lies
Estonia — Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Namibia — Under the Hanging Tree
Mongolia—City of Wind
Sweden — Opponent
Bolivia — The Visitor
Albania – Alexander
Croatia – Traces
Luxembourg — The Last Ashes
Iraq — Hanging Gardens
Pakistan — In Flames
Cameroon – Half Heaven
Nigeria – Mami Wata

Violence Towards Women / No rights for women / Abortion

Burkina Faso—Sira
Kenya—Mvera
Luxembourg — The Last Ashes
Australia – Shayda
Vietnam—Glorious Ashes
Estonia — Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Jordan — Inshallah A Boy
Sudan—Goodbye Julia
Pakistan — In Flames
Yemen — The Burdened
Poland — The Peasants
Belgium — Omen
Morocco — The Mother of All Lies
Nigeria – Mami Wata
Bangladesh — No Ground Beneath My Feet

Fighting for a cause/against an oppressor

Burkina Faso — Sira
Armenia — Amerikansi (anti Stalin)
Czechia — Brothers (anti Stalin)
Indonesia — Autobiography
The Netherlands — Sweet Dreams
Latvia — My Freedom
Paraguay—The Last Runway 2, Commando Yaguarete
China — The Wandering Earth II

People desperate to leave their country for a better life

Egypt–Voy! Voy! Voy!
Italy–Io capitano
Kenya—Mvera
Nepal — Halkara
Sweden — Opponent

Cancel Culture / Censorship / Sexual Misconduct

Germany — The Teacher’s Lounge
Turkey — About Dry Grasses
Kenya – Mvera
Bosnia and Herzegovina —Excursion

Disaster-ish Films

South Korea — Concrete Utopia
Spain — Society of the Snow
India — 2018: Everyone is a Hero
China — The Wandering Earth II
Bangladesh — No Ground Beneath My Feet

Chefs / Gastronomy

France – The Taste of Things
Dominican Republic — Cuarencena

GENRES

Documentaries

Ukraine — 20 Days in Mariupol
Tunisia — Four Daughters (hybrid)
Ireland — In the Shadow of Beirut
Canada – Rojek
Slovakia — Photophobia (hybrid)
Morocco — The Mother of All Lies
Brazil — Pictures of Ghosts
Estonia — Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Panama — Tito, Margot & Me
South Africa — Music is My Life
Albania – Alexander
Palestine — Bye Bye Tiberias — Director: Lina Soualem
Norway – Songs of Earth

Animated Features

The Philippines — The Missing
Hungary – Four Souls Of Coyote
Poland — The Peasants

Comedies

Finland — Fallen Leaves
Bhutan — The Monk & The Gun
Taiwan – Marry My Dead Body
Romania –Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Thailand — Not Friends
Egypt — Voy! Voy! Voy!
Saudi Arabia — Alhamour H.A.

Queer-Themed

The Philippines — The Missing
North Macedonia — Housekeeping for Beginners
Sweden — Opponent
Taiwan — Marry My Dead Body
Venezuela –The Shadow of the Sun
Dominican Republic — Cuarencena
Estonia — Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Switzerland — Thunder (marginally)
Portugal—Bad Living (marginally)

True or — Inspired by — Stories
Italy — Io capitano
Spain — Society of the Snow
UK — The Zone of Interest
Denmark — The Promised Land
Czechia — Brothers
Tunisia — Four Daughters
India — 2018: Everyone is a Hero
Morocco — The Mother of All Lies
Armenia – Amerikatsi
Egypt — Voy! Voy! Voy!
Latvia — My Freedom
Serbia—The Duke and the Poet
Saudi Arabia — Alhamour H.A.
Australia – Shayda
Palestine — Bye Bye Tiberias

Female Director Submissions
Australia – Shayda – Director: Noora Niasari
Austria, Vera — Directors: Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel
Bosnia and Herzegovina —Excursion — Dir: Una Gunjak
Burkina Faso — Sira — Director: Apolline Traoré
Costa Rica – I Have Electric Dreams – Dir: Valentina Maurel
Croatia – Traces – Director: Dubravka Turić
Estonia — Smoke Sauna Sisterhood – Director: Anna Hints
Georgia — Citizen Saint — Director: Tinatin Kajrishvili
Greece — Behind the Haystacks — Dir: Asimina Proedrou
Israel — Seven Blessings – Dir: Ayelet Menahemi
Latvia — My Freedom – Director: Ilze Kunga-Melgaile
Lithuania – Slow – Director: Marija Kavtaradzė
Malaysia—Tiger Stripes — Amanda Nell Eu
Mexico — Tótem – Director: Lila Avilés
Morocco — Mother of All Lies — Dir: Asmae El Moudir
Netherlands — Sweet Dreams — Director: Ena Sendijarević
Norway — Songs of Earth – Director: Margreth Olin
Palestine — Bye Bye Tiberias — Director: Lina Soualem
Panama — Tito, Margot & Me — Dirs: Mercedes Arias, Delfina Vidal
Poland — The Peasants — DK & Hugh Welchman
Switzerland — Thunder — Director: Carmen Jaquier
Tunisia — Four Daughters — Director Kaouther Ben Hania

Voting Rules for the 96th Oscar Awards:

IV. VOTING

A. International Feature Film nominations will be determined in two rounds of voting:

1. All active and life Academy members will be invited to view the eligible submissions in the category. Those who opt in will be required to see a minimum number of submitted eligible films as defined by the current procedures. Members will vote by secret ballot in the order of their preference for not more than fifteen motion pictures. The fifteen motion pictures receiving the highest number of votes shall advance to next round of voting.

2. All active and life Academy members will be invited to view the fifteen shortlisted films in the category. A member must see all shortlisted films for the ballot to be counted. Members shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five motion pictures. The five motion pictures receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the International Feature Film award.

B. Final voting for the International Feature Film award shall be restricted to active and life Academy members who have viewed all five nominated films.

C. The Academy statuette (Oscar) will be awarded to the film and accepted by the director on behalf of the film’s creative talents. For Academy Awards purposes, the country will be credited as the nominee. The director’s name will be listed on the statuette plaque after the country and film title.