More International Oscar News: Several "Finalist" Lists Announced

by Nathaniel R

The Man Standing Next ...has the difficult task of following in Parasite's footsteps!

The submission charts for Oscar's Best International Feature Film race have been updated to reflect more new entries like Croatia's Extracurricular, Palestine's Gaza Mon Amour, Panama's war drama Causa Justa , Romania's documentary Collective, and South Korea's The Man Standing Next.

But the big news at the moment is six finalist lists so keep your eye out for any of these pictures to rise up...

Click to read more ...

Will Mads Mikkelsen have another Oscar hit?

by Nathaniel R

Mads Mikkelsen stars in "Another Round"

Denmark is currently Oscar's favourite country in the Best International Feature category. Yes, we know they're not the "all time" favourite country, so don't @ us. But in the past 10 years (2010-2019) they've been nominated 50% of the time, with two additional finalists. Deep involvement in 70% of the Oscar conversations in a decade is a pretty great track record. How long can they keep it up? We won't know if they'll nab another nomination this season until a few months from now but Denmark just announced their finalists. On November 17th, they'll choose their submission between the following films: 

• Another Round by Thomas Vinterberg 
• A Perfectly Normal Family by Malou Reymann
• Shorta by Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid. 

If Denmark wants to bet based on past success they'll go with Another Round.  It just won the top prize at the London Film Festival. Plus, international star Mads Mikkelsen has headlined three Oscar-nominated films from his home country previously....

Click to read more ...

Which film will be Germany's Oscar submission?

Germany will reportedly decide between these ten films for their Oscar submission this year which they'll announce near the end of this month. If you've seen any of these pictures, do share your opinion!

Click to read more ...

Chi Film Fest: "Charlatan" an Oscar Submission

Coverage from the 56th annual Chicago Film Festival running October 14 - 25. 

by Nick Taylor

It takes a while for Charlatan, the newest film by Agnieszka Holland and the Czech Republic’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature this year, to get its feet under itself. The semi-fictionalized story of renowned Czech herbalist and healer Jan Mikolášek (played by Ivan Trojan for most of the film and by Josef Trojan, his son, as a young man), Charlatan opens with the death of president Antonín Zápotocký in 1957. With his biggest political ally and former patient gone, Mikolášek is warned to flee the Czech Republic before he's arrested by the Communist party. He refuses, either because he’s too bullishly stubborn or too self-flagellating, and is soon arraigned with his assistant František Palko (Juraj Loj) on death penalty-level charges that his lawyer proves are a sham with little investigation. The party doesn’t if the case is strong, or even real, as long as he’s executed. 

The film jumps between this scenario and following Mikolášek’s beginnings as a soldier in World War I, his training with a local herbalist named Mülbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), and the formation of his practice with František. Charlatan delineating these timelines with a color tint heavy enough to satisfy anyone who found the dual threads in Little Women difficult to track...

Click to read more ...

More International Submissions including Agnieszka Holland's "Charlatan"

by Nathaniel R

We're up to 14 announced submissions for this year's Best International Feature Oscar so those submission charts are updated with the following films added

• Algeria - Héliopolis 
• Czech Republic - Charlatan
• Ecuador - Emptiness
• Kosovo - Exile
• Singapore - Wet Season

We've only had the pleasure of seeing one of these five newly announced titles so far, Wet Season (which was a Golden Horse nominee last year). I liked it at TIFF in 2019 though I thought it erred on the side of being too much of a "slow burn" if you know what I mean. But a year later I'll admit that I think of it surprisingly frequently so even though I was a thumbs up, I underestimated it! It's an emotionally complicated story of an unhappy teacher who becomes way too involved with the life of her lonely student (they're pictured above). 

But back to the submissions, of the 14 films we know about so far 6 are from female directors! How about that? One of those female directors is a regular, in point of fact...

Click to read more ...