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...

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Golden Horse Nominations for 2019

by Nathaniel R

A lonely student and his teacher become friendly in "Wet Season"

Usually the Golden Horse nominations are a fun and glamorous mix of all the hot movies and movie stars from various Chinese language countries. This year, however, due to political fallout from a speech last year and a Chinese boycott because of increasing tension between the way China sees Taiwan and the way Taiwan sees itself, no films from Mainland China are competing (which takes out a huge chunk of movies and a lot of the most famous movie stars). So the bulk of the features nominated this year are features from Taiwan with a little Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong thrown in. UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS MARKED BY STARS

BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE 

• A Sun (Taiwan) ★
• Suk Suk (Hong Kong)
• The Garden of Evening Mists (Malaysia)
• Wet Season (Singapore)
• Detention (Taiwan)

You may have noticed that Taiwan's current Oscar submission Dear Ex  (streaming on Netflix) is not nominated here. That's because it was a major nominee last year at these same awards. Curiously Singapore's current Oscar submission A Land Imagined (streaming on Netflix) was not nominated in Best Feature at the Golden Horse Awards. It had to settle for a few craft nominations...

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