The long three-month process that leads to the Oscar nominees in the Best Foreign-Language Film category is finally nearing an end.
General committee members have viewed and scored all 63 of the entries, and PricewaterhouseCoopers has reviewed the ballots and come up with a list of the voters' six favorite films.
On Tuesday evening, they will reveal that list to an executive committee made up of 20 Academy members, who will discuss, debate and in the end add three more films to the list. Then, on Wednesday morning, the Academy will announce the resulting shortlist of nine films.
Here's what I'm guessing make up the shortlist, based on watching 43 of the 63 entries and talking to voters on both the general and executive committees:
>> Canada's "Monsieur Lazhar"
>> Finland's "Le Havre"
>> France's "Declaration of War"
>> Germany's "Pina"
>> Iran's "A Separation"
>> Israel's "Footnote"
>> Lebanon's "Where Do We Go Now?" (pictured above)
>> Poland's "In Darkness"
>> And the dark horse but a film that I hear played very well to the general committee, Denmark's "Superclasico"
More divisive, but possible, are Belgium's "Bullhead," whose director and star are getting a lot of heat; Brazil's violent "Elite Squad: The Enemy Within" and Mexico's brutal "Miss Bala," action films of the type that don't usually get nominated; and China's "The Flowers of War," with Christian Bale.
Two of the most critically acclaimed but most challenging films in the running -- Bela Tarr's "The Turin Horse" and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" -- almost certainly would need to be saved by the executive committee, on which they have some support. But both are most likely longshots nonetheless.
And I don't quite know what to make of the entry from Taiwan, "Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale," a two-part, four-and-a-half-hour action epic about a 1930s rebellion against the occupying Japanese forces.
It's enormously long and violent, but it's also a thrilling piece of epic filmmaking that just might turn a few heads on the committees. (More on that film in the reviews that follow.)
The nine shortlisted films then will be viewed by two more committees on Friday, Saturday and Sunday to choose the final five nominees.
(If I had a vote, I'd opt for "A Separation," "Le Havre," "Pina," "In Darkness" and "A Simple Life," with "Declaration of War," "Tatsumi," UK's "Patagonia," Lithuania's "Back to Your Arms," Iceland's "Volcano," Sweden's "Beyond" and Austria's "Breathing" in the running for my personal shortlist.)
The executive committee that goes to work on Tuesday is reportedly very similar in composition to last year's committee, which was chaired by producer Mark Johnson. Producer Ron Yerxa is the co-chair, while 2011 members included director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, writer Michael Tolkin, cinematographers Matthew Libatique and Janusz Kaminski and casting director Margery Simkin.
Over the last four months I've managed to see 43 of the 63 entries.
