Oscar Beat: Nine Films in Consideration for Foreign Film Nod

Posted by Josh Radde (josh@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 17, 2008

The Academy Award nominations will be announced next Tuesday, the 22nd. And like the nominations for Visual Effects being whittled down to seven films (which FSR reported), the category for Best Foreign Film has been narrowed down to nine finalists, before 5 will be selected next Tuesday.

Now, not having seen any of these films, I can only direct you to the trailers for these films. The nine films the Academy is considering for Best Foreign Film are:

The Counterfeiters–Austria
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation–Brazil
Days of Darkness–Canada (which features the always attractive Diane Kruger from National Treasure)
Beaufort–Israel
The Unknown–Italy
Mongol–Kazakhstan (The story of Genghis Khan’s rise to power)
Katyn–Poland
12–Russia (which appears to be a movie about dancing that was given blessing by Vladimir Putin)
The Trap–Serbia

Apologies for all of those trailers that don’t have subtitles.

Of those films, the one that most stands out for me is Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters. It’s the story of a con man who prints his own money. When he gets sent to a Nazi concentration camp, he’s hand-picked to begin counterfeiting money for the Germans, thus aiding in paying for the war. It’s based on a true story and I think that’s a hell of a premise.

What’s sure to cause controversy is the exclusion of some popular titles. Persepolis, the animated film about rock n’ roll from France was excluded from consideration, as was the acclaimed Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Both were nominated for the Golden Globe’s Best Foreign Language Film, and the film to win that award and the Globe for Best Director, Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, was also excluded. In fact, hilariously, all 5 nominees at the Globes got snubbed in consideration for the Oscar (joining Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution), which enhances my often-proclaimed theory that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association knows precisely dick about shit.

In other words, the Golden Globes should not ever be taken seriously.

Talking Point: Of the films listed above, which one looks most intriguing to you?

Read more articles by Josh Radde