Lambert Wilson (left) in Xavier Beauvois‘ Of Gods and Men, France’s entry for the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award
When it comes to the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film category there are no certainties because:
a) the overwhelming majority of those movies don’t get multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns that, for all purposes, "buy" votes
b) for the most part the talent involved is not internationally known; in other words, actors, directors, screenwriters, etc. don’t have Academy followings
c) only a relatively small group of Academy members gets to vote in this category.
d) among those members, an even smaller sub-group gets to watch more than 10-20 of the 60+ nominees.
e) a group of about 20 (some in Los Angeles, some in New York) gets to choose the five finalists out of nine semi-finalists, three of which are "correctives" hand-picked by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film committee.
In sum: most foreign language film contenders go unseen by the vast majority of Academy members; only a handful of Academy members actually gets to see a significant percentage of the contenders; and only another handful gets to pick the nominees.
Thus, much like at film festivals where some off-the-wall choices come out victorious, there’s no "middle-of-the-road" consensus.
That helps to explain why some widely acclaimed/and or "popular" movies (Volver, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, to name three in the recent past) have gone nominationless, whereas movies few people care about — as long as those few are all Academy members — get nominated.