Javier Bardem in Alejandro González-Iñárritu’s Biutiful (top); Stefania Sandrelli, Valerio Mastandrea in Paolo Virzi’s The First Beautiful Thing (middle); Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm in Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (photo by Per Arnesen) (bottom)
Bal / Honey (Turkey), Semih Kaplanoglu
Biutiful (Mexico), Alejandro González-Iñárritu
Carancho (Argentina), Pablo Trapero
In a Better World (Denmark), Susanne Bier
Mamma Gogo (Iceland), Fridrik Thor Fridriksson
Of Gods and Men (France), Xavier Beauvois
Outside the Law (Algeria), Rachid Bouchareb
La prima cosa bella / The First Beautiful Thing (Italy), Paolo Virzi
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand), Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Oscar 2011: Why Best Foreign Language Film Nominations Are Hard to Predict
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes Film Festival winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand), Semih Kaplanoglu’s Berlin winner Bal / Honey (Turkey), and Alejandro González-Iñárritu’s Biutiful (Mexico), which earned Javier Bardem the Best Actor Award at Cannes (shared with Our Life’s Elio Germano), are three Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award contenders that almost surely will be among that category’s nine semi-finalists to be announced on Jan. 20, 2011.
That’s not because Academy members who vote for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar pay much attention to film awards outside Los Angeles or New York.
Instead, it’s simply because if voters ignore those films in favor of some other entry about a cute, long-suffering little boy or a World War II/Nazi/Jewish Holocaust melodrama, the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee will in all likelihood add those three submissions to the shortlist — regular voting members get to select only six of the nine movies.
Now, what about the other six?
France has a great track record — 36 nominations in the last 54 years; that’s more than any other country — perhaps because Academy members may be much more willing to sit through a French entry than, say, a Nepalese, Bolivian, or Latvian entry, as those countries aren’t exactly known for their film industries.
So, I’m willing to bet that Xavier Beauvois‘ Of Gods and Men will be included in the shortlist as well.
Algeria has a solid Oscar track record — four nominations; one win — if one considers that the North African nation has hardly what one would call a thriving film industry. But things work out just fine when they submit (mostly) French movies as Algerian productions: Costa-Gavras‘ Z (1969), Rachid Bouchareb’s Dust of Life (1995) and Days of Glory (2006), in addition to Ettore Scola’s Franco-Italian Le Bal (1982).
Bouchareb is back this year with another "Algerian" movie, Outside the Law. Expect it to be shortlisted.
Italy is another country with a great Oscar track record — 27 nominations; 13 wins (including pre-competitive Foreign Language Film Oscars), more than any other country. Italy’s record gets even better if you include its co-productions with France and other nations (see the aforementioned Le Bal).
Paolo Virzi’s La prima cosa bella / The First Beautiful Thing, a dramatic comedy about a dour professor (Valerio Mastandrea) and his dying mother (veteran Stefania Sandrelli), has been criticized for its overwrought sentimentality. But that’s exactly the sort of stuff the Academy’s Foreign Language Film voters love (e.g., Nowhere in Africa, Twin Sisters, Departures, etc., etc.). I’d say The First Beautiful Thing has a pretty good chance of being shortlisted.
The last three films are, in all honesty, quite difficult to predict. Below are three possibilities: [More Oscar 2011 Best Foreign Language Film possibilities]
Susanne Bier, whose After the Wedding (2006) was a surprise nominee, may get another chance at the Foreign Language Film Oscar with In a Better World (Denmark), a socially conscious family drama.
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Mamma Gogo (Iceland) tells the story of how a film director copes with his mother’s encroaching Alzheimer’s disease. If Mamma Gogo has the right amount of sentiment, it could very well be shortlisted. Fridriksson’s magical-realist Children of Heaven, which also dealt with the problems of old age, was nominated back in 1992.
Pablo Trapero’s Carancho (Argentina) stars Ricardo Darín as a ruthless insurance agent who falls in love with a kind-hearted doctor (Martina Gusman). Darín has brought luck to a couple of Argentinean entries — Son of the Bride and this year’s winner, The Secret in Their Eyes. He could do it again next year.
If the Thai and/or Turkish entry/ies get nominated, it’ll be a first for either country.
Why no mention about the “The Precinct”, a film which is represented by Azerbaijan and which is now just demonstrates the cinema of Los Angeles’ “Sunset 5″. Look at this movie, maybe he is worthy of getting into the shortlist. I think he did not bad odds to become a major discovery this year.