Best International Film: Poland's "The Peasants" & the Philippines' "The Missing"

by Cláudio Alves

As Guillermo del Toro loves to remind us, animation is cinema. It's not a genre but a medium with its own particularities and styles, distinct idioms, and formal grammar. This year, some countries have taken these values to heart, selecting animated works to represent them at the Oscars. Curiously, two of them offer original ways to consider Rotoscoping as an animation practice, defying those who dismiss such films as lesser. They are Poland's The Peasants, from the same team behind Loving Vincent, and The Missing from the Philippines. Between painterly ravishment and digital befuddlement, these filmmakers take Rotoscope cinema to its limits and beyond…

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"Fallen Leaves" and "The Zone of Interest" lead the EFA nominations

by Cláudio Alves

Because of their specific focus and disconnection from the mainstream release calendar, the European Film Awards are rarely seen as part of the long road to Oscar. Then again, there's always the exception that proves the rule, and this year is exceptional, alright. Many Academy Award contenders showed up across the board, even beyond those submitted for the Best International Film category. Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest and Aki Kaurismäki's Fallen Leaves, for instance, scored nominations for Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, and Screenplay. Sandra Hüller even managed to double-dip, getting recognized for this Nazi nightmare and her turn in Justine Triet's Palme d'Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall.

Discover the complete list of European Film Awards nominations, plus some additional commentary, after the jump…

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First & Last 042

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

The answer (and some Oscar talk) is after the jump...

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Will the "Loving Vincent" team return to the Oscars via "The Peasants"?

by Nathaniel R

THE PEASANTS

Do you remember that painted animation film Loving Vincent (2017)? It was billed as the world's first fully painted feature film and it went on to an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Feature category (eventually losing to Pixar's Coco). The married filmmaking team behind that picture have done it again with The Peasants, which is an adaptation of a novel about a peasant girl who causes a scandal by marrying a rich older man. Only three animated films have ever been nominated for Best International Feature Film -- Waltz With Bashir, Flee, and The Missing Picture (sort of) -- and interestingly enough all three of them can be classified as documentaries in addition to being animated. The same isn't true of The Peasants but Poland is submitting this one for the Oscar race...

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TIFF '23: "The Boy and the Heron" goes into the unknown

by Cláudio Alves

Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron"

Hayao Miyazaki's last last picture before his latest last picture – already being discredited as such by Studio Ghibli VP Junichi Nishioka – saw him take on the model of a relatively conventional biopic. Despite its wavering between reality and dream, the now and the before, The Wind Rises represented one of the director's most straightforward efforts, doing away with the fantasy elements that defined most of his career. Had it stayed his swan song, it would have made for a career's closing chapter shaped like an intersection of culminating obsessions and stylistic disruption. The Boy and the Heron, previously known as How Do You Live?, posits a inversion of those paradigms. Oft-repeated ideas are invoked only to be collapsed, while tone and style return to the land of fantasy and dream logic.

Before reading ahead, A WARNING. This film will probably be best enjoyed by those who go into it blind, similarly to how Japanese audiences received it. If you want that experience, be satiated in the knowledge this is another masterpiece by Miyazaki. If you yearn for more, come with me down to a place that's no place within a time without time…

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