The Oscars are right around the corner! Nine films have been shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Films at the 2013 Academy Awards.
The full list is provided below, but the frontrunner has got to be Michael Haneke’s soul-crushing Amour. If you’d like to learn more about any of these films, we’ve adding links to their respective IMDB pages.
The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Amour, Michael Haneke, director – Austria
War Witch, Kim Nguyen, director – Canada
No, Pablo Larraín, director – Chile
A Royal Affair, Nikolaj Arcel, director – Denmark
The Intouchables, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, directors – France
The Deep, Baltasar Kormákur, director – Iceland
Kon-Tiki, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, directors – Norway
Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu, director – Romania
Sister, Ursula Meier, director – Switzerland
One film that’s gathered a lot of attention is Barbara from Germany, but it failed to make the shortlist, despite appearing on many prediction lists over the past few months, and even was nominated by the National Board of Review for Best Foreign Language Film.
That aside, one of the biggest issues with the Academy Awards comes to the forefront with lists like this, as the Academy only allows one entry per country, which is pretty foolish, to say the least. If you’re celebrating the best cinema has to offer, why force countries to choose between two potentially Oscar-winning films?
For instance this year in France, both The Intouchables and Rust and Bone were nominated for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards out of France, but due to Academy rules only one could be nominated with the honor. France ended up choosing the more uplifting The Intouchables, but would Rust and Bone have been included on this shortlist chances are it would be nominated for an Oscar.
That small quibble aside, these are all films that have earned varying amount of attention from critics, awards, and Oscar pundits, alike.
Have you seen any of these shortlisted films?
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