Quality (much like fairness) is in the brain of the judge. (Of course, if we're lucky enough to have a judge who actually has a functioning brain.) In a way, that sort of sums up voting panels, committees, and individuals everywhere, including the perennially reviled Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' voters who select the five best foreign-language film nominees each year.

Sometimes, I must grudgingly admit, it's all a matter of taste. So, the Cannes jury and world critics loved Cristi Puiu's abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. In case foreign-language-film-voting Academy-ites loved it as well, they didn't love it well enough. The shoo-in nominee fail to land a nod in early 2008.

Other surprises in recent years include the absence of both Pedro Almodóvar's Volver and Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah among the nominated foreign films. (This year, Almodóvar's Broken Embraces was bypassed by the Spanish Oscar committee; their submission is listed further down.)

You like potato, they like tomato, I like tiramisu? Well, that could be. That could also be the result of warped voting procedures; e.g., the fact that only a (small? tiny?) minority of Academy members end up watching even a sample of the sixty or so submitted films each year.

My point is: of all the top Oscar categories, this is by far the most unpredictable. I'm sure that those Academy voters even surprise themselves every now and then — I mean, Aki Kaurismäki's way out there The Man Without Past? Susanne Bier's unusual melodrama After the Wedding? How did those get in next to conventional fare like, say, Days of Glory, The Lives of Others, Nowhere in Africa, and The Crime of Father Amaro? (By the way, "conventional" doesn't necessarily means "bad." It just means, well, "conventional," or if you prefer, "mainstream.")

Anyhow, the five films listed at the top of this article are Oscar 2010 possibilities — that's it. Even Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner The White Ribbon doesn't have a guaranteed Oscar nomination because it may end up being too stark for a group of people who generally like their dramas either unabashedly sentimental or easily accessible — or even better, both. (No Haneke-directed film has ever been nominated for an Oscar — in any category.)

Among the other contenders of note — and of varying degrees of Oscarability — in the best foreign language film category are:

Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow (Peru), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journeys (above; Colombia), a well-received tale featuring an aging accordion player traveling with a young apprentice; and Oskar Jonasson's Reykjavik-Rotterdam (Iceland), about a former smuggler who, out of economic necessity, may revert to his old ways. Jonasson's thriller recently received quite a bit of publicity on this side of the Atlantic thanks to an announced remake to star Mark Wahlberg.

Also, Ruben Ostlund's Golden Beetle nominee (that's Sweden's Oscars) Involuntary (above; Sweden), about summer fun gone sour; Joon-ho Bong's Mother (Korea), in which a mother does everything in her power to save her son, who has been accused of a serious crime; and Corneliu Porumboiu's Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner Police, Adjective (Romania), in which a sensible police officer refuses to arrest a young pot dealer.

Plus Asghar Farhadi's About Elly (above; Iran), winner of the Silver Bear for best director in Berlin; Havana Marking's Sundance Award-winning documentary Afghan Star (United Kingdom), about how some people in Afghanistan will take all sorts of chances to appear on the television show Pop Idol; Fernando Trueba's The Dancer and the Thief (Spain), a political-psychological drama set in Chile, in which two amnestied former inmates take surprising paths once they're out of prison, partly thanks to the influence of a mute ballerina; and Yonfan's Prince of Tears (Hong Kong), the story of two mainland Chinese sisters recently arrived in Taiwan who have their lives turned upside down after their parents are accused of being spies.

Curiously, the Brazilian committee has submitted another violent urban tale for the Oscars — Sérgio Rezende's Time of Fear (above) — despite the fact that neither of their previous submissions in that genre (City of God, Last Stop 174) landed a nomination. (City of God was nominated in several categories the following year thanks to Harvey Weinstein's Oscar Vote Nabbing Machine.)

In fact, chances are that those Academy members who vote in the foreign film category will much rather watch (and vote for) Leon Dai's Golden Horse nominee No Puedo Vivir sin Ti (Taiwan), the tale of a poor dockworker who fights Taiwan's bureaucracy so as to keep custody of his child.

But then again, I could be wrong. After all, Time of Fear focuses on a mom trying to rescue her imprisoned son at a time of social and political chaos in São Paulo.