With only one week to go before the deadline for submission of entries in the Academy's Best Foreign-Language Film category, the number of contenders has hit 40.
If the last couple of years are any indication, that means we now know most of the field: the rest will be announced by their respective countries over the next week, or they'll come as surprises when the Academy releases its list of qualifying films in mid-October.
Also read: Oscar's Foreign-Language Submissions: The Master List (So Far)
This week's new selections include an Israeli film that played well at Cannes and Toronto and picked up a U.S. distribution deal with Sony Classics (which already has several submissions); a Canadian film that won the People's Choice Award for homegrown films in Toronto; an acclaimed Mexican action film about a beauty queen caught in drug wars; and a Russian movie so controversial that the head of the country's Oscar selection committee has publicly asked it to withdraw.
UPDATE: Within hours of this story's posting, selections were announced by the Czech Republic ("Alois Nebel"), Denmark ("Superclasico"), India ("Adaminte Makan Abu") and South Africa ("Beauty"). Descriptions of those films have been incorporated into the master list of foreign-language submissions (link above).
The new entries:
Albania: "The Forgiveness of Blood"
Director: Joshua Marston
This is an odd foreign-language entry in that its director, Joshua Marston, was born and raised in California; his previous film, "Maria Full of Grace," was set in Colombia and the United States, and won an Oscar nomination for actress Catalina Sandino Moreno. (It was also submitted by Colombia in the foreign-language category, but disqualified for not having enough Colombian creative input.) After a seven-year break in which he directed television series like "Six Feet Under," "In Treatment" and "Law & Order," he co-wrote and directed "The Forgiveness of Blood," about a high school student caught up in a "blood feud" between his and another Albanian family.
Marston and Andamion Murataj won the Silver Bear award for best script at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, and the film was for the most part well-received at the recent Toronto Film Festival. "It’s a strong premise," wrote Scott Tobias in a mixed review at the A.V. Club, "and Marston has clearly worked hard to get the traditions of Old World Albanian culture right."
Bosnia and Herzegovina: "Belvedere"
Director: Ahmed Imamovic
The film is named after a refugee camp, where the action takes place 15 years after the Srebrenica massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. The main character, played by Sadzida Setic, is a woman who hasn't stopped searching for the remains of her husband and son, even as she continues to care for other family members who are more obsessed with getting on reality television shows.
The film is shot in black and white by Imamovic, whose other work includes the 2005 film "Go West," and features a dozen women who really lost relatives in the massacre.
Brazil: "Elite Squad 2"
Director: Jose Padilha
It's an action movie and a sequel to a film that is not likely to have been seen by many members of the Oscar foreign-language committee, which means that the Brazilian selection may have a tough go of it with Academy voters. Set in a world of corrupt police, crooked politicians, paramilitary groups and slums rife with drug-dealing, the film has set box-office records in its homeland, and for the most part drawn positive reviews.
"Elite Squad 2" focuses on Roberto Nascimento, an officer in the Special Police Operations Batallion of the Rio de Janeiro police, though it divides its time between his work and his family life with his teenage son. It won nine awards at the Cinema Brazil Grand Prize, including Best Picture and the Audience Award for best film.
Bulgaria: "Tilt"
Director: Viktor Chouchkov Jr.
A commercial success in Bulgaria, Chouchkov's drama centers on a group of friends who dream of opening their own bar; the film turns into a risky romance, set against the backdrop of political and social changes sweeping Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
The debut of director Viktor Chuchkov Jr., "Tilt" has screened at a number of festivals in the United States – including the Seattle International Film Festival, where it was named first runner-up for the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Film.
Canada: "Monsieur Lazhar"
Director: Philippe Falardeau
Three days before it was chosen as Canada's submission, "Monsieur Lazhar" was named Best Canadian Feature in the audience awards at the Toronto Film Festival. Produced by Luc Dery and Kim McCraw, who also produced Canada's 2010 pick "Incendies," the film deals with an Algerian refugee who becomes an elementary school teacher to a class whose previous teacher had committed suicide.
Calling the film "an intelligent but generally cheery comedy," Eric Kohn at indieWIRE wrote, "Life-affirming in accordance with classic Frank Capra formula, 'Monsieur Lazhar' doesn’t abuse the backdrop of wartime scars as an excuse for heavy-handed dramatic weight. The affecting nature of the material is well-earned."
Chile: "Violeta"
Director: Andres Wood
Director Wood, who was responsible for Chile's 2005 entry, "Machuca," has created a personal, biographical look at Violeta Parra, a Chilean folksinger, artist and activist who the director has compared to the country's Edith Piaf or Bob Dylan. Francisca Gavilan plays the iconic Chilean performer, who helped reinvent Chilean folk music and wrote the oft-recorded song "Gracias a la Vida" before committing suicide at the age of 49.
China: "The Flowers of War"
Director: Zhang Yimou
China has chosen an entry that's guaranteed to be high-profile both because of the man behind the camera, "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Hero" director Zhang Yimou, and because of its star, recent Oscar winner Christian Bale. The film deals with the 1937 occupation of Nanking by the Japanese army, with Bale as an American who takes refuge in a cathedral with a group of schoolgirls and courtesans.
The setting is the same as last 2009's brilliant and devastating Chinese film "City of Life and Death," which was passed over as that country's official selection for what almost certainly seem to have been political reasons.
Colombia: "The Colors of the Mountain"
Director: Carlos Cesar Arbelaez
Previously a documentary filmmaker, Arbelaez makes his narrative feature debut with a drama set in the highlands of Colombia, where indigenous locals live in a picturesque setting but are constantly asked to choose sides between the paramilitary troops and guerilla rebels who are fighting in their vicinity.
"Has futility ever looked so gorgeous?" asked James van Maanen on the TrustMovies blog. "It's hard to image a more beautiful movie than this one, taking place in the highlands of Colombia, where the colors are bright and true, but the life endured makes that spot between rock and hard place look practically alluring."
Hong Kong: "A Simple Life"
Director: Ann Hui
It's no doubt unfair to call "A Simple Life" the Hong Kong version of "The Help" – but like that hit film, Ann Hui's drama focuses on the bond between a family and a lifelong domestic employee who has essentially raised her employers' child. Lead actress Deanie Ip won the Best-Actress award at the recent Venice Film Festival, while Hong Kong star Andy Lau plays the grown man who must come to the aid of the woman who raised him.
In Variety, Justin Chang called the film "a tender ode to the elderly, their caregivers and the mutual generosity of spirit that makes their limited time together worthwhile," and said it was "suffused with the gentle, unforced humanity viewers have come to expect" from the director.
Iceland: "Volcano"
Director: Runar Runarsson
ScreenDaily's Mark Adams calls it "a coming-of-age tale" about "a recently retired 67-year-old man" – an unusual conceit but, he adds, a "moving and neatly made drama … driven by a powerful and nicely uncompassionate performance by Theodor Juliusson." Set in Reykjavik, the film follows a longtime school superintendent who retires to a life in which he has seemingly uneasy relationships with his wife and his two grown children. When calamity strikes, though, the man gradually finds a new purpose in life.
Runarsson has been to the Oscars before: he was nominated for "The Last Farm," a live-action short from 2005.
Ireland: "As If I Am Not There"
Director: Juanita Wilson
Another director who's familiar with the Oscars because of a nominated short is the Irish director Juanita Wilson, who came to the Kodak two years ago with the heartbreaking "The Door." She spoke to TheWrap then, and said she was almost finished editing a feature based on a true story about the Bosnian war. "As If I Am Not There" is that film: though made by Irish filmmakers, it's set in Bosnia and is primarily in the Serbo-Croatian language, which qualifies it under current Academy rules. (It would have been disqualified under old regulations that said films had to be in the language of their country of origin.)
Based on a book by Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic, "As If I Am Not There" deals with a Sarajevo woman who is imprisoned during the war and repeated raped by soldiers. Wrote Kelly Stewart at Toronto Film Scene, "Few films this year — if not this decade — will challenge you like 'As If I Am Not There.'"
Israel: "Footnote"
Director: Joseph Cedar
Rather than a local board making the decision, Israel simply submits the film that wins the Ophir, its version of the Oscar. This year's selection also won the Palme d'Or for screenwriting at Cannes, and it comes from a director whose "Beaufort" received an Oscar nomination in 2007.
"Footnote," which played extremely well both in Cannes and in Toronto, deals with the rivalry between a father and son, both of whom are Talmud professors in Jerusalem. Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly offered one of many raves from Cannes when she wrote, "There’s real philosophical depth and clarity to the script. Plus, it’s funny and smart, it’s told with wild, inventive cinematic flourishes and experimental grace notes, and [Shlomo] Bar Aba and [Lior] Ashkenazi deserve awards on their own shelves for their performances."
Lithuania: "Back to Your Arms"
Director: Kristijonas Vildziunas
Lithuania's is yet another entry with its roots in World War II – in this case, it deals with a father and daughter who are separated in that war and who try to reunite in Berlin 17 years later, just as the wall is going up. With the father coming from Soviet Lithuania and the daughter living in the United States, Cold War tensions complicate their reunion.
The drama was named best film and Vildziunas won the best director award at the Lithuanian film and TV industry's Silver Crane Awards, where "Back to Your Arms" took home eight awards overall.
Mexico: "Miss Bala"
Director: Gerardo Naranjo
One of the most critically-acclaimed films in competition is this tense action drama about an aspiring beauty queen caught in a war between Mexican drug cartels. Violent and uninterested in Hollywood-style happy endings, the film consistently won raves at Cannes, in Toronto and at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where it won awards for Naranjo and actress Stephanie Sigman.
Jeff Wells compared the film to Michaelangelo Antonioni, and added, "Naranjo has totally ignored the chaotic action aesthetic of Michael Bay & his acolytes, and delivered an action thriller with a truly elegant visual style." Whether Academy voters in this category will go for any kind of action film remains an open question.
Peru: "October"
Director: Daniel and Diego Vega
An entry in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes in 2010, "October" centers on a tough moneylender who's unexpectedly forced to care for a baby that most likely resulted from his liason with a prostitute. Caring for the child brings him together with his religious next-door neighbor.
"The film is precision deadpan in the vein of Bresson, Kaurismaki and Jarmusch," said the Filmfest DC catalog.
Russia: "Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel"
Director: Nikita Mikalhkov
The expensive action film about the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was a commercial and critical flop when it opened in Russia in May. But it's big and spectacular; it's the second part of a two-film sequel to the 1994 film "Burnt by the Sun," which actually won the Oscar in this category; it's set in the Oscar foreign-language committee's favorite time period, World War II; and its director/star is highly connected within the Russian government.
The head of Russia's selection committee, filmmaker Vladimir Menshov, did not agree with his committee's choice, arguing that "audiences and critics hated the film" and that it's part of a series and can't stand on its own. He's now asking Mikalhov to take his film out of the race in favor of more highly-regarded entries like Alexander Sokurov's "Faust" and Andrei Zvyagintsev's "Elena," though that step that seems unlikely. Of course, a little controversy is de rigeur in this category.
Slovokia: "Gypsy"
Director: Martin Sulik
Martin Sulik's "Gypsy" was selected from a field of seven contenders, according to the Audiovisual Information Centre of the Slovak film industry, which sums up the film like this: "Gypsy is the story of Adam, a boy who, after the death of his father, struggles to cross the boundaries of his settlement and tries to change his siblings’ lives. He finds himself in a conflict with racial, social, and cultural prejudice and the unwritten laws of his own Roma community."
The film was shot in real gypsy communities in Slovakia with a cast of non-actors. Variety's summary: "The bruising life of a Roma teen takes on shades of 'Hamlet' in … Martin Sulik's poignant and beautifully rendered humanist drama 'Gypsy.'"
Vietnam: "Thang Long Aspiration"
Director: Luu Trong Ninh
Historical dramas are a mainstay in foreign-language submissions, with Vietnam's entry going back more than 1,000 years to depict the life of King Ly Thai To, the ruler who moved the capital to what is now Hanoi (and was then called Thang Long, or Rising Dragon). The lavish film was reportedly shot in only two-and-a-half months and edited in one month, in order to be ready for Hanoi's 1,000th anniversary.
Director Luu Trong Ninh won the best director award at his country's 2010 Golden Kite Awards.