Pedro Almodóvar's Volver, winner of the Best Screenplay Award and of an ensemble Best Actress Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has been chosen as Spain's submission for the 2006 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
The family drama stars Penélope Cruz and Lola Dueñas as sisters whose mother's ghost (played by Almodóvar veteran Carmen Maura) shows up so as to bury the (figuratively speaking) ghosts of the past.
Volver was up against Agustín Díaz Yanes' swashbuckling historical drama Alatriste, starring Viggo Mortensen, and Manuel Huerga's Salvador, the story of a young Catalonian anarchist and bank robber played by Daniel Brühl.
Almodóvar has already won two Oscars. Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (in which Cruz co-starred) was chosen the Best Foreign Language Film of 1999, and Hable con ella / Talk to Her won him the Best Original Screenplay Award for 2002.
The director, however, has had trouble with Spain's film selection committee. Hable con ella was passed over as Spain's 2002 submission, and so was La Mala educación / Bad Education in 2004. (For the record: In 2002, Fernando León de Aranoa's Los Lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun, a labor-relations drama starring Javier Bardem, was Spain's submission. It failed to make the cut. In 2004, however, Alejandro Amenábar's Mar adentro /The Sea Inside, the story of a tetraplegic — also Bardem — who fights for his right to die, went on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.)
Volver, already the film to beat in the foreign-language category, a near sure bet for Best Actress (Cruz) and Best Director, and a likely possibility even in for Best Picture (a rarity for a non-English-language film), opens in the United States on November 3.
The Australian Film Commission (AFC) has announced that Rolf de Heer' and Peter Djigirr's Ten Canoes, filmed in the indigenous language of Ganalbingu, has been selected as Australia's official entry for the 2006 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Set in the distant past, Ten Canoes tells the story of a young man who is attracted to one of his older brother's wives. The film, Australia's first indigenous-language production, stars Jamie Gulpilil, Richard Birrinbirrin, Frances Djulibing, and it is narrated by David Gulpilil.
Ten Canoes won the Special Jury Prize of the "Un Certain Regard" sidebar at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and will be screened at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.