by Nathaniel R
MAGNETIC FIELDS is the Greek entry for the Oscars this year
An exciting morning for Best International Feature Film followers. Just after Sweden and Denmark both announced their Oscar finalists list, four more countries have announced their official submissions. (Each country can submit just one film, though not all of the participating company's name finalist lists) The films are as follows.
🇬🇷 MAGNETIC FIELDS (Yorgos Gousis)
GREECE (5 nominations from 42 submissions)
It's always nice when a country submits a comedy (the submission list is often rather dour if you just read all 90ish synopses). This one is about a man and a woman trying to find a place to bury a metallic box on an island (???) This is a debut feature for comic book artist turned director Yorgos Gousis which won five prizes at the Hellenic Iris Awards (essentially the Greek Oscars) which began in 2010. Dogtooth, which went on to an Oscar nomination and led to a huge career for Yorgos Lanthimos, was the first winner of the top prize.
🇩🇿 OUR BROTHERS (Rachid Bouchareb)
ALGERIA (5 nominations and 1 win from 23 submissions)
Our Brothers is a true story about the death of a student (probably by police hands) after weeks of student protests regarding a university reform bill. It premiered at Cannes. This is the seventh time (!!!) Algeria has submitted a Rachib Bouchareb picture which is nearly a third of their submissions. That said three of their five nominations have been his films (Dust of Life, Days of Glory, Outside the Law) so he's not a bad bet! Algeria won on their first submission for Costa Gavras classic "Z" (1969) which was also nominated for Best Picture that year.
🇧🇬 MOTHER (Zornitza Sofia)
BULGARIA (1 finalist from 33 submissions)
Zornitza Sofia alternates between TV directing, documentaries and features, and this film plays into her past filmography. It's based on the life of her friend Elena Panayotova who was also in her documentary Modus Vivendi about the youth of Bulgaria. Panayotvo's humanitarian project "Artists for Children" helps orphans in Bulgaria and Kenya develop creative skills. IMDb has no listing for this film so we assume it hasn't premiered yet but we could be wrong!
🇧🇷 MARS ONE (Gabriel Martins)
BRAZIL (4 nominations, and 1 additional finalist from 52 submissions)
Cláudio raved about this movie at Sundance so check that review out. Brazil has had a rough go since Central Station which should have won the category 24 years ago. It's not for lack of good films (though sometimes the submission choice has been the problem as in the year where they refused to send the grand Aquarius.)
Updated Oscar Charts
Pg 1 - Albania through Greece - 7 official entries and 3 finalist lists
Pg 2 - Haiti through Norway - 3 official entries and 1 finalist list
Pg 3 - Palestine through Vietnam - 6 official entries and 5 finalist lists
Current Predictions