Cristian Mungiu's 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS: Biggest Oscar Snubs #4d
Matteo Garrone's mafia drama Gomorrah was the most internationally acclaimed Italian production of 2008. Among its award nominations were those from the British Academy, the Danish Film Critics, the French Academy's Cesar, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and the Spirit Awards. Additionally, Gomorrah won the Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and took Best Film honors at both the European Film Awards and the Italian Academy's David di Donatello Awards.
Regarding the early 2009 snub of Gomorrah, which was nowhere to be found among the Hollywood Academy's nine Best Foreign Language Film semi-finalists, I'm once again quoting Scott Foundas in the L.A. Weekly:
"One year ago this week, I wrote with astonishment and anger about the omission of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's Cannes-winning abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' nine-film 'shortlist' for the 2007 Foreign Language Film Oscar. That article, entitled 'How Do You Say "Oscar Scandal" in Romanian?', went on to become one of the most viewed and commented-upon entries ever posted on this blog. …"
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"[Committee Chair Mark Johnson has effected a number of changes] And yet, and yet, and yet … here we are on the day of the announcement of the Academy's 2008 Foreign Language Film shortlist, and the news is far from joyous. While one can take consolation in the fact that French director Laurent Cantet's widely admired, Palme d'Or-winning The Class and Israeil [sic] director Ari Folman's extraordinary animated documentary Waltz with Bashir are safe for now (along with Austrian director Gotz Spielman's superb revenge drama Revanche), nowhere to be found is Italian director Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, a blisteringly intense, multi-faceted portrait of the Neapolitan mafia that is not only one of the year's most widely acclaimed films from any country, but has been credited with single-handedly returning Italian cinema to the world cinema spotlight."
This year, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cannes Film Festival winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives, Xavier Beauvois' multiple Cesar nominee Of Gods and Men, Florin Serbin's Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear winner If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, and Semih Kaplanoglu's Golden Bear winner Bal / Honey were also missing from the Oscar's list of nine semi-finalists. But Andreas Öhman's "family friendly" dramatic comedy Simple Simon, Rachid Bouchareb's unenthusiastically received Hors la Loi / Outside the Law (a mostly French-made "Algerian" entry), and Oliver Schmitz's sentimental mother-daughter drama Life, Above All were all in.
And thus the Academy's Best Foreign Language Film farce continues…