Oscars Try to Navigate Through Babel (The New York Times)

January 31, 2010

By DENNIS LIM

THERE was a time when the Academy Award for best foreign-language film reflected the state of world cinema: Fellini films won back-to-back Oscars in the mid 1950s, as did Bergman films in the early ’60s. But the category has come to suggest a peculiar gulf between Academy opinion and the tastes of critics and audiences alike.

Some Oscar-nominated foreign titles from the past decade will leave even committed art-house audiences drawing a blank: “Zelary” from the Czech Republic, “As It Is in Heaven” from Sweden, “Zus & Zo” from the Netherlands. Meanwhile critical favorites and festival hits have often gone unacknowledged; a list of conspicuous omissions might start — but certainly would not end — with “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Caché,” “Silent Light,” “Gomorrah,” “The Edge of Heaven,” “Secret Sunshine” and “Volver.”

This incongruity has much to do with the category’s submission and nominating process, which is more byzantine than for any other, involving nominating bodies in various countries and several Academy committees. This year’s nine-film shortlist, announced this month, was whittled down by two committees from 65 submissions; the final five, to be determined by a third committee, will be revealed along with the other Oscar nominations on Tuesday. Mark Johnson, a veteran producer (“The Notebook,” “Ballast,” the “Narnia” films) and chairman of the Academy’s foreign-language committee since 1999, said that he has been striving in recent years to improve a process that, he acknowledged, often left the impression of an out-of-touch voting body. “We’ve attacked some of what I think have been real legitimate problems and criticisms,” he said.

While Mr. Johnson’s efforts have been largely focused on arriving at a more credible group of nominees, they have not streamlined the complex, multistage procedure. At each phase “there are always surprises and disappointments,” said Michael Barker, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing three of this year’s nine shortlisted films: Michael Haneke’s “White Ribbon” (Germany), Jacques Audiard’s “Prophet” (France) and Juan José Campanella’s “Secret in Their Eyes” (Argentina).

The rule changes have not eliminated controversy. This year some critics pointed to omissions like “Police, Adjective” (from Romania), “Mother” (South Korea) and “I Killed My Mother” (Canada), all of which were the submissions of their respective countries, and films like “The Maid” (Chile) and “Vincere” (Italy), which were not selected in the first place.

Jonathan Sehring, the president of IFC Entertainment, an active distributor of foreign films, called the nominating process “terribly flawed” and singled out for criticism the one-film-per-country rule.

Some countries arrive at their choice by polling an Academy-like professional organization with hundreds or thousands of members; countries with less robust film industries might have more ad-hoc groups, sometimes with as few as a dozen voters. While the system is designed to allow even the smallest of film-producing nations a shot, it also ends up punishing relative powerhouses like France and Italy, which have many more acclaimed releases in a given year than, say, Iceland or the Ivory Coast, but must pick only one.

The emphasis on national origin means that international co-productions (like “The Motorcycle Diaries”) tend to fall by the wayside. Until recently the Academy also insisted that the foreign language match the foreign country; for instance, Mr. Haneke’s “Caché,” a French-language film by an Austrian director, was deemed ineligible. And two years ago “The Band’s Visit” was disqualified from being Israel’s official candidate because too much of the movie was in English.

At the national level the decisions are often tangled in internal politics. “Some countries approach the process in terms of ‘Whose turn is it?’ ” Mr. Sehring said, adding that personal agendas can come into play. Some questioned Italy’s decision this year to submit Giuseppe Tornatore’s big-budget period epic “Baaria” over Marco Bellochio’s “Vincere,” a film about Mussolini’s secret lover that has been received with greater enthusiasm at festivals (and is being released in the United States by IFC this year); it has not gone unnoticed that one financial backer of “Baaria” is Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.

Voting bodies are apt to consider, sometimes above all other factors, how well a film might travel. Mr. Barker of Sony recalled being at an Academy-related panel at a film festival in Norway and hearing the question come up in the bluntest terms: “Do we pick what we think is the best film, or do we pick what we think the Americans will vote for?” France has fielded suspiciously treacly fare like “Merry Christmas” and “The Chorus,” ignoring work by better-known auteurs like Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas.

The record in the foreign-language category suggests a weakness for stodgy, conservative films, and the Academy members who vote in the category are usually older.

Gary Palmucci, general manager of Kino International, attended a few Academy screenings two years ago, when one of his films, “Beaufort” (Israel), was up for an Oscar. With a few exceptions, he said, “it looked like everybody was over 65.” (Kino has another Israeli film on this year’s shortlist: “Ajami,” which opens in New York this week.)

This demographic quirk can be partly chalked up to the rigors of the nomination process. Every year the submitted movies are divided into four groups; an Academy member who wishes to participate in the nominations must see at least 80 percent of the films in one group (which usually works out to more than a dozen films). All films must be seen in theaters; since most of the titles are not in commercial release, that usually means attending special Academy screenings.

“The people who have that kind of time are often the older members who are retired,” Mr. Johnson said. And they tend to favor what Mr. Palmucci described as “a more meat-and-potatoes kind of film.” Mr. Sehring noted that movies with relatively challenging subject matter (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” about abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania) or form (the hand-drawn animation of “Persepolis”) have often been overlooked.

Such criticisms are hardly new, but they intensified two years ago when the Academy snubbed “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes. Mr. Johnson responded by introducing an intermediate step in the nominating process to try to create a safeguard measure against glaring oversights.

“I don’t mean to be critical of the general committee because it’s older,” Mr. Johnson said, “but I wanted to make the selection process reflect more the Academy at large.”

Instead of entrusting the general membership with arriving at the nine-film shortlist, the Academy now takes the top six choices of the voting members (an average of 300 every year, Mr. Johnson said); the remaining three are wild-card selections by an executive committee appointed by Mr. Johnson, including the director Curtis Hanson, the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and the German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, whose film “The Lives of Others” was a foreign-language winner. (The shortlist is narrowed to the final five by yet another committee’s members, who watch all nine films in a three-day period.)

Last year — the first time the shortlist was determined by two separate committees — the eventual nominees included well-reviewed art-house hits like “The Class” and “Waltz With Bashir” as well as an under-the-radar critical favorite, “Revanche.” This year’s list includes the Berlin festival’s top prizewinner, “The Milk of Sorrow” (Peru), and two Cannes hits, “The White Ribbon” (Germany) and “A Prophet” (France), films that might be too dark or difficult to have made it this far under the old system.

But there is nothing Mr. Johnson can do once the nominees are set and the vote is opened to the entire membership. Last year his rule changes produced the category’s most respectable lineup in some time. But it was the Japanese film “Departures,” which many considered the most conventional and sentimental of the five, that won.

That decision may not stand the test of time, but in a sense it is in keeping with tradition. In 1981, when Mr. Barker and his partner Tom Bernard were at United Artists, they had a foreign-language Oscar frontrunner in François Truffaut’s “Last Metro.” The other prime contender was thought to be Akira Kurosawa’s “Kagemusha.” But the eventual winner was a Russian film, long since forgotten, called “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears.”

“It was a surprise to us that this could happen,” Mr. Barker said. “But then we realized this kind of thing has been happening for generations.”

And then there were nine... (Screendaily)

Nine films are on the foreign-language film Oscar shortlist this year. Mike Goodridge assesses what was left off the list and which might go forward to the final five

The Oscar shortlist of nine films for the best foreign-language category, whittled down from 65 official submissions, saw some surprise inclusions and some shutouts but was generally without the embarrassing omissions of previous years, such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days in 2008.

Cannes heavyweights The White Ribbon (picutred) (Germany) and A Prophet (pictured) (France) – both widely acknowledged as the year’s masterpieces - both secured slots in the final nine, while Claudia Llosa’s The Milk Of Sorrow from Peru, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year, and two other Cannes critical darlings, Samson & Delilah from Australia and Ajami from Israel, also made the shortlist.

The Academy foreign-language committee’s mainstream sensibility also embraced popular hits Winter In Wartime from Netherlands and The Secret In Their Eyes (pictured) from Argentina, while perhaps the two eye-openers in the selection were Ermek Tursunov’s Kelin (aka The Daughter-In-Law) from Kazakhstan, a harsh but beautiful tale of nomadic life in the fourth century, and Stephan Komandarev’s The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner from Bulgaria, a dramatic story of a German man with amnesia on a journey to his Bulgarian past.

Even though Academy foreign-language chief Mark Johnson has worked tirelessly to ensure outstanding submissions were not snubbed by the committees, there were some notable omissions. One has to assume the committees, largely composed of aged AMPAS members who have the time to see the alloted films, scowled with disapproval at daring, artful or quirky pictures such as Police, Adjective (Romania), The Misfortunates (pictured) (Belgium), I Killed My Mother (Canada) or Terribly Happy (Denmark).

China’s safe ploy of submitting Chen Kaige’s Forever Enthralled over the brilliant City Of Life And Death did not work. Nor did Chile’s decision to submit DawsonIsla 10 by Miguel Littin over Sebastian Silva’s popular The Maid, which previously won a Golden Globe nomination. Likewise the perennial Spanish snub of Pedro Almodovar, this time for Broken Embraces, failed to yield a place on the shortlist in favour of The Dancer And The Thief from former Oscar-winner Fernando Trueba.

Other fine films which failed to strike a chord included Bong Joon-ho’s delirious mystery Mother, Asghar Farhadi’s powerful About Elly from Iran and Ursula Meier’s Home from Switzerland, all three 2009 festival favourites. And Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning’s rousing Second World War drama Max Manus from Norway had all the ingredients of an Oscar contender.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the failure of Oscar stalwart Giuseppe Tornatore to make the final nine with his Sicilian epic, Baaria. The lavish production, probably the biggest in Italy’s film history, may not have received unanimous critical affection but it features all the warmth, humanity, colour and cinematic sweep for which Tornatore, a former winner in this category, is famous. Still without a US distribution deal, the film would have surely benefited from an Oscar nod.

Too good to overlook

As to whether The White Ribbon or A Prophet will go forward to the final five, that is a question that can only be answered on February 2, since this particular Oscar category is never short of shocks and can never be second-guessed.

That said, those two epic films have been playing face-off since they emerged as clear favourites in competition at Cannes where The White Ribbon won the Palme d’Or and A Prophet the Special Jury Prize. Subsequently the Michael Haneke film has also beaten Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet to the European Film Award and the Golden Globe, although neither film is particularly Oscar-friendly. The White Ribbon is an enthralling mystery but, being a Haneke film, it refuses to give any conclusive answers as to who-done-it, and A Prophet is a hard-hitting and violent 150 minute drama about a North African in a French prison which is about as far removed from the ageing Oscar voters’ experience as could be imagined.

Perhaps 2009 is one year in which AMPAS voters will fall in line with every other jury that has had these two films in its selection. Perhaps these particular pictures are just too good to overlook.

Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has domestic rights to both films, but the Oscar-savvy SPC also has rights to Juan Jose Campanella’s The Secret In Their Eyes, a leisurely thriller about pensioners falling in love while revisiting an old murder case. Now there is a film which has Oscar written all over it.

"El secreto de sus ojos", entre las nueve prenominadas al Oscar extranjero

20 January, 2010 By Jeremy Kay (Screen Daily)

As expected Michael Haneke’s German entry The White Ribbon (pictured) and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet from France have made it on to the Academy’s foregn language shortlist, although Bong Joon-ho’s widely admired South Korean film Mother is the notable omission.


Nine films have advanced from the initial pool of 65 submissions and will be in the mix when the five nominations are announced on February 2.

The shortlisted films in alphabetical order by country are:

El Secreto De Sus Ojos (Argentina). Dir: Juan Jose Campanella

Samson & Delilah (Australia). Dir: Warwick Thornton

The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner (Bulgaria). Dir: Stephan Komandarev

Un Prophete (France). Dir: Jacques Audiard

The White Ribbon (Germany). Dir: Michael Haneke

Ajami (Israel). Dir: Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani

Kelin (Kazakhstan). Dir: Ermek Tursunov

Winter In Wartime (The Netherlands). Dir: Martin Koolhoven

The Milk Of Sorrow (Peru). Dir: Claudia Llosa

Foreign language nominations are again being determined in two phases. The Phase I committee, comprising several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 65 eligible films between mid-October and January 16. The group’s top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s foreign language film award executive committee, constitute the shortlist.

The shortlist will be reduced to five nominees by specially invited committees in New York and Los Angeles. They will spend January 29-31 viewing three films each day before casting their ballots. The nominations will be announced on February 2.

Awards Watch: Foreign Language Films (The Hollywood Reporter)

By Scott Roxborough

Who will win this year's foreign-language Oscar race?

That's almost impossible to answer. Partly, it's because other awards groups, like the Golden Globes, provide a poor litmus test given that they use a different voting process from the Oscars and therefore come up with very divergent results -- as, for instance, with "Letters From Iwo Jima," named best foreign-language picture by the Globes when it wasn't even eligible for the Oscars.

Another reason is that the Academy's voting procedure (where voters have to agree to see a quota of entries if they wish to select the nominees) means that a relatively older group chooses the candidates, voting on a pool that is limited to one film per country. The Academy has tried to avoid this group's preference for more mainstream, safer films by having its foreign-language steering committee choose up to three films that combine with the broader group's six choices to create a shortlist of nine, from which the five nominees will be selected -- but that still leaves a process considerably at odds with the major festivals and critics' groups.

Nowhere was this clearer than last year, when Japanese entry "Departures," largely ignored by critics and the festival circuit, beat critical favorites from France ("The Class") and Israel ("Waltz With Bashir").

"Everyone was surprised by the Japanese film winning," says Claudia Landsberger, managing director of Dutch promotion body Holland Film. "It maybe shows that things are shifting, making it even harder to predict."

This year, the race is complicated by the fact that several front-runners were eliminated when they were not selected by the countries where they were made.

Sebastian Silva's domestic servant drama "The Maid," for example, a Grand Jury Prize winner in Sundance and a Golden Globes and Independent Spirit nominee, is nowhere to be found on the list of 65 eligible pictures. Instead, Chile has gone with Miguel Littin's "Dawson Isla 10," a political period piece set in the aftermath of the 1973 coup that brought dictator Augusto Pinochet to power.

Oliver Assayas' "Summer Hours" has racked up several honors, including nods from critics' associations in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, but France bumped it in favor of Jacques Audiard's prison drama "A Prophet."

And Spain has again snubbed Pedro Almodovar, whose "Broken Embraces" is a front-runner for the Golden Globes but won't make the Oscar short list -- at least not in the foreign-language category. (It is eligible for the other categories, including best picture, because it was given a U.S. release in 2009.) Spain is pinning its hopes on "The Dancer and the Thief," a heist drama from Fernando Trueba, the Oscar-winning director of "Belle Epoque."

Other award-winning foreign features whose visa won't be stamped Oscar this year include John Woo's action epic "Red Cliff" (China); the bloody vampire romance "Thirst" from director Chan-wook Park (South Korea); Cary Fukunaga's immigrant drama "Sin Nombre" (Honduras) and Anne Fontaine's fashion biopic "Coco Before Chanel."

Of the candidates actually in the running, Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" (Germany's entry despite the director's Austrian passport) and France's "A Prophet" lead the kudos stakes. Both were winners in Cannes, with "Ribbon" taking the Palme d'Or and "Prophet" the Grand Jury prize, and also at the European Film Awards. New York's online reviewers, along with critics in Toronto and Chicago, voted Haneke's black-and-white period piece the best foreign-language title of the year, while Audiard's tough crime story got the nod from the National Board of Review.

Both, of course, are Golden Globes nominees where, according to Bookies.com, "The White Ribbon" is the favorite to win with 2-to-1 odds compared with 6-to-1 for "A Prophet."

But Academy voters are a separate breed. And both pictures are a difficult sell there.

"The Academy has its own tastes, and they're not the same as other festival juries or critics," says Christian Dorsch, head of German Films, which brings together the jury every year to pick Germany's Oscar candidate. " 'Run Lola Run' was a unanimous choice by the (German) jury, but it didn't get nominated, even though it went on to be a boxoffice success in the U.S. It was the same with 'Goodbye Lenin!' which was a Golden Globe nominee but missed out on the Oscars."

To increase their chances, national juries often go with what has worked in the past. For Europe, that means World War II. No period has a better Oscar track record. This year's race has several WWII-set epics, from Norway's "Max Manus" to the Netherlands' entry "Winter in Wartime"; from the Slovakian "Broken Promise" to "Refractaire" (aka "Draft Dodgers") from tiny Luxembourg; and the Czech thriller "Protector."

"Protector" "is tailor-made for Hollywood sensibilities: War, Germans and Jews," is how Czech film academy president Petr Vachler puts it.

"The more epic films show what a country is capable of: the costumes, the sets, an so on," adds Landsberger. "Academy members aren't just interested in the quality of the script or the acting; they judge the entire production."

Many critics have turned up their noses at Italy's entry, Giuseppe Tornatore's "Baaria." But the Sicilian epic, with its grand, romantic view of Italian history, not to mention strong production values, is the kind of European cinema the Academy loves. Torantore also has the advantage of name recognition, thanks to his Oscar win for "Cinema Paradiso" in 1990.

Similar factors could help director Chen Kaige, whose "Forever Enthralled," a biographical drama set in the opulent world of Chinese opera, will evoke a sense of deja vu from fans of his Oscar-nominated "Farewell, My Concubine."

It's hard to say whether fame will be a factor in judging "Mother," Korea's entry. Director Joon-ho Bong is best known stateside for his hit monster movie "The Host." But that film is worlds away from the murder-mystery plot and domestic melodrama of "Mother." Working in "Mother's" favor is a breakout performance by lead Kim Hye-ja.

Reputation isn't the only factor at work. In the past, Academy voters have often overlooked higher-profile titles in favor of films that address important political issues or redress historic wrongs. Claudia Llosa's Berlin Golden Bear winner "The Milk of Sorrow" does both with its allegorical look at the damage wrought by political violence in Peru. Similarly, the plots of Austria's "For a Moment, Freedom" (Iranian political refugees fleeing to Europe), Japan's "Nobody to Watch Over Me" (media sensationalism in the Internet age) and Australia's "Samson and Delilah" (Aborigines fighting poverty and racism) have a ripped-from-the-headlines appeal that might make the difference.

Of course, no foreign-language forecast would be complete without a few dark horses. At first glance, "Police, Adjective" Romania's hope, is an unlikely Oscar candidate. Director Corneliu Porumbiou has made an anti-thriller where semantic discussion takes the place of shoot-outs and car chases. But this intelligent drama has a core of devoted and vocal fans -- not least Roger Ebert, who picked it as one of the best foreign films of 2009.

Xavier Dolan's "I Killed My Mother" is another out-of-left-field candidate that could go the distance. The Canadian drama, tracing the love/hate relationship between a mother and her homosexual son, has been gathering critical momentum since it swept the Directors' Fortnight honors in Cannes last year.

But don't bet on either. Which would be hard, in any case: No matter what odds the bookies give on foreign-language wins elsewhere, they are by and large avoiding the Oscar race.

Sixty-nine films vie for foreign language Golden Globe award

Palme d’Or winner The White Ribbon (pictured), A Prophet,Mother, and City Of Life And Death are among a record 69 foreign-language films that have qualified for the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

Five nominees will be announced on December 15. The awards will take place on January 17, 2010.

The list of contenders is:

About Elly (Iran)
Ajami (Israel)
Baaria (Italy)
Backyard (Mexico)
Broken Embraces (Spain)
Broken Promise (Slovak Republic)
Can Not Live Without You (Taiwan)
Cell 211 (Spain)
Chameleon (Hungary)
Chandni Chowk To China (India)
Chilango Chronicles (Mexico)
City Of Life And Death (China)
Coco Before Chanel (France)
The Dancer And The Thief (Spain)
Dawson, Island 10 (Chile)
A Day At The Museum (France)
Delhi-6 (India), Donkey (Croatia)
Eden Is West (France)
For a Moment (Austria-France)
Freedom (Austria/France)
I Galantuomini (Italy)
The Girl On The Train (France)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Sweden)
God’s Offices (France/Belgium)
Grandpa Is Dead (Philippines)
Grown Ups (France/Sweden)
Harishchandrachi Factory (India)
Hello Goodbye (France/Israel/Italy)
Hipsters (Russia)
I Killed My Mother (Canada)
I Saw The Sun (Turkey)
Il Grande Sogno(Italy)
John Rabe (Germany)
Lebanon (Israel)
Letters To Father Jacob (Finland)
London River (Algeria)
Louise-Michel (France/Belgium/Luxembourg)
Made In Hungaria (Hungary)
The Maid (Chile)
Max Manus (Norway)
Micmacs (France)
The Misfortunates (Belgium)
Mother (South Korea)
My Queen Karo (Belgium)
Nobody To Watch Over Me (Japan)
Police, Adjective (Romania)
Prank (Hungary)
Prince Of Tears (Hong Kong/Taiwan)
A Prophet (France)
Protektor (Czech Republic)
Queen To Play (France/Germany)
Refractaire (Draft Dodgers) (Luxembourg)
The Reverse (Poland)
The Road From Elephant Pass (Sri Lanka)
Rudo And Cursi (Mexico)
Samson & Delilah (Australia)
The Secret In Their Eyes (Argentina)
Secrets Of State (France)
Someone I Loved (France/Belgium/Italy)
Southern District (Bolivia)
Terribly Happy (Denmark)
Thirst (South Korea)
Vincere (Italy)
The Waltz (Italy)
Ward No. 6 (Russia)
Welcome (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)
Winter In Wartime (The Netherlands)
With A Little Help From Myself (France)

Awards Countdown: foreign-language films (Screen)

Sixty-five films have been submitted for the foreign-language film Academy Award category this year but the Globes and Baftas might well recognise some of the films that failed to make the Academy cut, writes Mike Goodridge.

This year’s foreign-language film category for the Academy Awards is missing a few more notable films than usual, and it is not the fault of the Academy but of the countries.

The submissions list, which is already limited in that it allows only one film per country, omits some of the year’s best films — City Of Life And Death from China, which won at San Sebastian; Lebanon from Israel, which won at Venice; The Maid from Chile, which won Sundance’s world dramatic competition; Dogtooth from Greece which won Un Certain Regard at Cannes; Broken Embraces from Spain and Vincere from Italy, which were in Competition at Cannes; and Euro box-offi ce smash The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo from Sweden.

The same category in the Golden Globes and Bafta can pick up these films as nominees, so it will be a point of interest to see how different the three awards are in the fi nal analysis.

That said, the 65 films submitted for the Oscars will yield a shortlist, first of nine, then whittled down to the final five, which should encompass the two great masterpieces from Cannes this year — Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet — alongside some of that festival’s most notable successes : Police, Adjective (Romania), Ajami (Israel), I Killed My Mother (Canada) (pictured), Mother (Korea), Samson And Delilah (Australia) and The Misfortunates (Belgium).

Then there is the Berlin Golden Bear winner The Milk Of Sorrow from Peru and one of the Berlinale’s best films this year, Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly from Iran. And it might not have received the warmest reviews in Venice but you cannot rule out Giuseppe Tornatore’s Baaria.

The director’s sentimental style has always appealed to Academy voters and even his last film, the uneven thriller The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta), made it to the fi nal nine in 2007. Other films of note from the second half of the year include Juan Jose Campanella’s box-offi ce hit The Secret In Their Eyes from Argentina, which played Toronto and San Sebastian; and Fernando Trueba’s The Dancer And The Thief from Spain, which had its world premiere in San Sebastian. Both films star Ricardo Darin and both directors have a strong Oscar history.

As part of our awards countdown coverage, Screen caught up with some of the film-makers who stand a strong chance of scoring recognition across all awards bodies.

Could Michael Haneke win an Oscar or could the man he beat to the Palme d’Or, Jacques Audiard, take gold instead? Will the Academy’s conservative membership opt for more traditional, less edgy films such as The Secret In Their Eyes or Baaria? And will some foreign-language films of note, such as Sin Nombre or Coco Before Chanel, simply fall through the cracks?

Screen International brings you six of the directors of this year’s Oscar-nominated foreign-language films.

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Michael Haneke

WRITER-DIRECTOR, THE WHITE RIBBON (GERMANY)

Michael Haneke came to The White Ribbon after he had made his English language remake of Funny Games in the US, which, he says, was not his favourite working experience. “For a control freak like me, the US was a very difficult country to work in,” he says. “I didn’t feel in control with the language and… we were under-financed and needed more money.”

So he was not prepared to compromise on his German epic, a script he had written as a threepart TV series 20 years ago and which “ended up in a drawer”. The $17.9m (€12m) production was to be shot in black and white with no major stars. “Yes, it was expensive, but the success of [2004 hit] Hidden (Caché) helped get it financed,” he says.

For the first time, Haneke asked for assistance with his screenplay, enlisting Jean-Claude Carriere to help him cut 20 minutes from the script. “After two afternoons’ work, we had it down to two and a half [hours]. It’s the first time I have ever cut anything. I normally always write to the right length.”

Haneke spins myriad mysteries in The White Ribbon but eschews conventional answers. “You can’t offer answers and solutions,” he says. “You should assume people are more intelligent than that. People always ask me about the videotapes in Hidden but that is the least important element in the film.”

But he does concede that the film shows a time in Germany in which the seeds of fascism were being sown. “I’m not offering an explanation for fascism but showing the conditions from which it can arise,” he says.

The Palme d’Or win at Cannes was, he says, useful because it makes the financing conditions easier for his next film, but he also expresses pleasure in the award which had been denied to him when Hidden, The Piano Teacher and Code Unknown played in Competition. “It is always nerve-wracking,” he says, “because you have to wait until the last day to find out.”

The Austrian director is now representing Germany in the foreign-language Oscar category, a race for which he was excluded with Hidden since it was deemed neither French enough nor Austrian enough by the Academy. So to which country does he feel he belongs? He smiles before answering. “I belong to the country of Haneke,” he says.

By Mike Goodridge

Jacques Audiard

DIRECTOR/CO-WRITER, A PROPHET (FRANCE)

Wearing a pork-pie hat on a rainy London morning, Jacques Audiard explains that for him, “a film only exists if it has a rapport with what I see in the street”. Looking for a project to follow his critically acclaimed The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Audiard says hewas at an impasse. Later, on the phone from Paris, he explains: “When that happens, I think about casting.”

Audiard had in fact already linked up with scriptwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri, who was working on a story that would become A Prophet, when he found his inspiration.

Visiting Dafri on the set of another film, Audiard sat in the backseat of a car and found himself next to Tahar Rahim, who would go on to star in the film. “When I saw him, it was love at first sight. The only problem with that is that you don’t want to believe the first person you see is the person you’ve been looking for. I don’t know how I would have done this film if he didn’t exist. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it.”

But A Prophet, which had a lengthy gestation period — Audiard and Nicolas Peufaillit wrote the screenplay from an original work by Dafri along with Thomas Bidegain — did come together and has gone on to even greater acclaim than his last film. A Prophet took the Grand Jury prize at Cannes this year and is France’s Oscar entry this year. Audiard does not love the label though. “It’s a bit heavy to say I’m representing France,” he laughs.

Still, awards do mean something to him. “They move me, but when I get a prize like in Cannes I think about the people I’ve seen get these prizes before me. I thought about Wim Wenders and Martin Scorsese in Cannes this year and I thought, ‘They were up here too,’ and, ‘No, you must have made a mistake.’”

Regarding the international roll out of A Prophet, Audiard allows that it is important to know his films travel. “I fell off my chair the other day when someone told me foreign films only make up 2% or 3% of films released in the UK, so it’s quite a big deal to be part of those 2% or 3%. There’s nothing more moving for me than to do something about a specific issue that gives something back to someone in Asia or America… We make films to communicate, after all.”

By Nancy Tartaglione

Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani

WRITER-DIRECTORS, AJAMI (ISRAEL)

“Scandar Copti and I worked seven years on this project and up to our first screening, in Cannes’ 2009 Directors’Fortnight, we had some of the best and most experienced professionals telling us why this film couldn’t possibly work,” says Yaron Shani, one of the two debutant writerdirectors of Ajami.

However, the clash between Jews, Christians and Muslims in a Jaffa slum, which could serve as a microcosm for Israel as a whole, received a special mention from Cannes’ Camera d’Or jury, going on to pick up awards in Jerusalem, Valencia, London, Montpellier, Ghentand AFI Fest in Los Angeles and, most recently, Thessaloniki.

“After Cannes, there were no doubts any more,” concedes Shani. “Israeli reports from Cannes were still relatively subdued, but once the film was shown and awarded in Jerusalem, even the most severe film critics went into unexpected superlatives.”

It was not just the critics who were impressed: Ajami won all the major prizes from the Israeli Film Academy, beating Venice winner Lebanon. Having taken the film to a number of international festivals, Shani was surprised to discover the political subtext of the picture, which “may have opened doors for us”, was secondary to its success.

“Everywhere I went, audiences and the press were far more seeing a good movie.” Naturally, most interviewers asked about an Arab (Copti is an Arab-Israeli, born in the Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa) and an Israeli (Shani is an Israeli Jew) working together, but wondered even more at the remarkable results they obtained from a cast of non-actors.

When Israel’s two leading distributors originally passed on the film, Shani, with Ajami’s producer Mosh Danon and talent agent Ilan Zeller, set up a distribution company called Yuval to release it in Israel. In its first six weeks, the film has reached 120,000 admissions — a major hit in Israeli terms. “Originally there was no great enthusiasm among local distributors and by the time the picture swept over audiences in Jerusalem and better offers came up, we had our own operation going,” he explains.

The US release is planned for January through Kino International.

Shani has not yet discussed the future with Copti, but while he believes each should develop an identity of his own, he admits the chance to work together again would “be wonderful, given the special relationship we have”.

By Edna Fainaru

Bong Joon-ho

WRITER-DIRECTOR, MOTHER (SOUTH KOREA)

South Korea’s Oscar entry is Bong Joon-ho’s thriller about a desperate mother out to prove her son’s innocence when he is accused of murder.

A director with a sharp and humorous point of view, known for playing with genre conventions while satirising social ones, Bong’s previous works include Memories Of Murder, based on a series of unsolved killings that terrorised 1980s Korea; and The Host, a thriller which sees a dysfunctional family battle a river monster. Both were record breaking hits on their Korean release and won critical acclaim at home and abroad, playing international festivals such as San Sebastian and Cannes.

With Mother, Bong says he was again trying to break open stereotypes. “I’d always wanted to work with Kim Hye-ja, and I made this film specifically for her. The actress is herself a ‘mother’ icon in Korea, so I decided to confront that head on.

Whether it’s by breaking down themes or stories, I like doing things other people don’t. The ‘mother’ theme or the subject matter is usually portrayed as warm, but I went the opposite direction to show what extremes motherhood could go to. I wanted to portray a mother speeding recklessly with her brakes undone.”

Mother made its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes before screening at further international festivals including Toronto and New York. “Cannes was the first time I showed the film publicly so I was nervous about the reviews, but all the major publications received the film well. It was also gratifying to go to places where they didn’t know Kim Hye-ja or Korean Wave star Won Bin [in the role of the son], and have people laud their performances.”

Locally, although the film’s 3 million admissions were not close to his previous record-breakers, Mother drew the best reviews of his four films.“

But the online reactions were mixed, remembers Bong. “Young male viewers anticipating something else from my previous films said it was too heavy — one called it ‘a film I wouldn’t want to see with my mother’. Others said it was a masterpiece surpassing Memories and The Host. I think for a film of its size, Mother had a good round.”

Much ado has been made of Mother’s Oscar submission, but the director remains level-headed: “It’s just one out of 60-something submissions. People have told me not to be without hope since the extreme mother theme is one that works in so many cultures — with the Jewish mother, the Italian mother and so on.

It seems to be doing alright in Japan, and I’m looking forward to its release in the UK, US, France and Germany.”

By Jean Noh

Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning

DIRECTORS, MAX MANUS (NORWAY)

With the $10m Second World War epic Max Manus now the highest-grossing Norwegian film for 30 years and its subsequent entry as the country’s foreign-language Oscar candidate, its directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning have come a long way from making short films and music videos on Roenning’s father’s video camera.

After attending the Stockholm Film School and completing their yearlong national service — where they made “propaganda” films — they continued to work together (under the name Roenberg) on commercials, music videos and short films before making their debut feature — Bandidas starring Penelope Cruz — in 2006. The script for Max Manus came to them through leading Norwegian producer John M Jacobsen. Actress Liv Ullmann brought it to Jacobsen’s attention after the writer Thomas Nordseth-Tiller (who tragically died of cancer earlier this year aged just 28) took part in a pitching contest at the Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival in 2006.

The real Max Manus is a legend in Norway for his work as a saboteur during the Second World War, including missions to blow up German ships at Oslo docks. He evaded capture and received training in England before returning to Norway to work undercover. He died in 2006.

Funding for the film came from a variety of state film funds, including $3.1m from Norwegian Film as well as contributions from Germany and Denmark, and distributor Trust Nordisk, which handled the film’s local release.

Aksel Henning, perhaps Norway’s biggest movie star, was cast in the lead and he is understood to have turned down several parts in order to play the role. As Manushimself placed great emphasis on friendship and loyalty, it was important to ensure the wider cast of friends and co-saboteurs was exactly right, which proved a bigger challenge for the directors. The 49-day shoot took place predominantly in Oslo with a week in Scotland and just four days on a sound stage. However, it was the postproduction work, where CGI scenes of ships being blown up were added that concerned the directors. “At that point, we hadn’t seen really good photo-real effects in Norwegian films,” explains Sandberg.

“We worked with just about all of the post-production houses in Oslo and they did a top-class job.” Max Manus was released in Norway on December 19 last year to major local success — a quarter of the population saw it at the cinema — and it has since screened at a number of festivals, including Toronto. “A pivotal moment for us,” says Roenning, “was showing it to Tikken [Max’s widow] and Gunnar [Sonsteby, the only key character in the film still alive]. It was the most nervewracking part of the whole process. They said it took them right back.”

By Caroline Parry

Giuseppe Tornatore

WRITER-DIRECTOR, BAARIA (ITALY)

Tornatore is no stranger to the foreign language Oscar category. He won in 1989 for Cinema Paradiso and was nominated again in 1996 for The Star Maker, but a nomination for his latest film, Baaria, would perhaps mean the most to him since it is his most personal film to date.

The Sicilian saga is a tribute to Tornatore’s hom town, Bagheria, in Palermo province where he lived until he was 28. But Baaria is not a true story, Tornatore explains. “Some of the characters are inspired by real people and others have been created from multiple real people. And then some are completely invented. The lead character of Peppino is in some aspects inspired by my father but is mostly fictional. If there is any autobiographical element to the film, it is in Peppino’s son who wants to become a photographer.” The saga follows Peppino from his childhood as a street kid in the 1930s to old age and also tells the story of the town that grows around him.

“The one thing I didn’t want to do was make a historical film,” he says. “I didn’t think it was necessary. My vision was to tell the story of a small town and take it through an enormous amount of time to show that time is fleeting. I wanted to play with time to tell the story of a century in a short span and signify that time doesn’t exist, that it’s possible for a father and a son to cross each other in the same time.”

So Tornatore avoided using any historical facts about Sicily. “It was just the echo of time that interested me,” he says. The film does, however, address the dream of communism that grew up in Italy after the Second World War. “It served as a point of passion after World War Two,” says Tornatore.

“Peppino is a communist but at the end of his life he realises his political dream never really came to fruition. The only goals in his life that worked were in his private life.” Tornatore shot the epic film for 17 weeks in Tunisia (and a further eight weeks in Sicily), slowly constructing the town of Bagheria (pronounced ‘Baaria’ in local slang) as it grows throughout the century. “I was able to realise everything in Tunisia,” he says. “What we couldn’t shoot in Sicily we were able to construct from scratch. It’s like if you take Fifth Avenue from today, you couldn’t shoot a movie there that takes place in the 1920s. In this movie, I reconstructed my Fifth Avenue in the 1920s.”

By Mike Goodridge

The complete Oscars Foreign Language Film selection list.

Albania
Alive!
Dir: Artan Minarolli

Argentina
The Secret In Their Eyes
Dir: Juan José Campanella

Armenia
Autumn Of The Magician
Dirs: Ruben Kevorkov, Vahe Kevorkov

Australia
Samson & Delilah
Dir: Warwick Thornton

Austria
For A Moment, Freedom
Dir: Arash T. Riahi

Bangladesh
Beyond The Circle
Dir: Golam Rabbany Biplob

Belgium
The Misfortunates
Dir: Felix van Groeningen

Bolivia
Zona Sur
Dir: Juan Carlos Valdivia

Bosnia-Herzegovina
Nightguards
Dir: Namik Kabil

Brazil
Time Of Fear
Dir: Sergio Rezende

Bulgaria
The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner
Dir: Stephan Komandarev

Canada
I Killed My Mother
Dir: Xavier Dolan

Chile
Dawson, Isla 10
Dir: Miguel Littin

China
Forever Enthralled
Dir: Chen Kaige

Colombia
The Wind Journeys
Dir: Ciro Guerra

Croatia
Donkey
Dir: Antonio Nuic

Cuba
Fallen Gods
Dir: Ernesto Daranas

Czech Republic
Protektor
Dir: Marek Najbrt

Denmark
Terribly Happy
Dir: Henrik Ruben Genz

Estonia
December Heat
Dir: Asko Kase

Finland
Letters To Father Jacob
Dir: Klaus Haro

France
A Prophet
Dir: Jacques Audiard

Georgia
The Other Bank
Dir: George Ovashvilli

Germany
The White Ribbon
Dir: Michael Haneke

Greece
Slaves In Their Bonds
Dir: Tonis Lykouressis

Hong Kong
Prince Of Tears
Dir: Yonfan

Hungary
Chameleon
Dir: Krisztina Goda

Iceland
Rejkavik-Rotterdam
Dir: Oskar Jonasson

India
Harishchandrachi Factory
Dir: Paresh Mokashi

India
Harishchandrachi Factory
Dir: Paresh Mokashi

Indonesia
Jamila And The President
Dir: Ratna Sarumpaet

Iran
About Elly
Dir: Asghar Farhadi

Israel
Ajami
Dir: Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani

Italy
Baaria
Dir: Giuseppe Tornatore

Japan
Nobody To Watch Over Me
Dir: Ryoichi Kimizuka

Kazakhstan
Kelin
Dir: Ermek Tursunov

Korea
Mother
Dir: Bong Joon-ho

Lithuania
Vortex
Dir: Gytas Luksas

Luxembourg
Refractaire
Dir: Nicolas Steil

Macedonia
Wingless
Dir: Ivo Trajkov

Mexico
Backyard
Dir: Carlos Carrera

Morocco
Casanegra
Dir: Nour-Eddine Lakhmari

Netherlands
Winter In Wartime
Dir: Martin Koolhoven

Norway
Max Manus
Dirs: Espen Sandberg, Joachim Roenning

Peru
The Milk Of Sorrow
Dir: Claudia Llosa

Philippines
Grandpa Is Dead
Dir: Soxie H Topacio

Poland
Reverse
Dir: Borys Lankosz

Portugal
Doomed Love
Dir: Mario Barroso

Puerto Rico
Kabo And Platon
Dir: Edmundo H. Rodriguez

Romania
Police, Adjective
Dir: Corneliu Porumboiu

Russia
Ward No 6
Dirs: Karen Shakhnazarov, Aleksandr Gornovsky

Serbia
St George Shoots The Dragon
Dir: Srdjan Dragojevic

Slovakia
Broken Promise
Dir: Jiri Chlumsky

Slovenia
Landscape No.2
Dir: Vinko Moderndorfer

South Africa
White Wedding
Dir: Jann Turner

Spain
Dancer And The Thief
Dir: Fernando Trueba

Sri Lanka
The Road From Elephant Pass
Dir: Chandran Rutnam

Sweden
Involuntary
Dir: Ruben Östlund

Switzerland
Home

Dir: Ursula Meier

Taiwan
No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti
Dir: Leon Dai

Thailand
Best Of Times
Dir: Youngyoot Thongkongtoon

Turkey
I Saw The Sun
Dir: Mahsun Kirmizigul

UK
Afghan Star
Dir: Havana Marking

Uruguay
Bad Day To Go Fishing
Dir: Alvaro Brechner

Venezuela
Libertador Morales, El Justiciero
Dir: Efterpi Charalambidis

Vietnam
Don’t Burn It
Dir: Dang Nhat Minh