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Time's Up! Did Your Favorite Country Submit a Film to the Oscars?

by Eric D. Snider Oct 1st 2008 // 9:15PM

Filed under: Foreign Language, Independent, Oscar Watch, Cinematical Indie

Pencils down, foreigners! Wednesday was the deadline to submit a film to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration in the Best Foreign-Language Film award at the Oscars, and 51 countries came up with something. Nations with particularly active film industries, such as Spain, France, and Italy, submit something pretty much every year; at the other end of the spectrum, there's the Middle Eastern nation of Jordan, which submitted a film (Captain Abu Raed) this year for the very first time.

If you're not familiar with the system, it works like this. (You can read the whole set of rules at the Academy's site.) Every country is allowed to submit only one film, and the Academy basically leaves it up to the individual nations to determine how that entry is chosen. The film need not have played in the U.S. yet (they usually have not, in fact), but it must have played theatrically for at least a week in its country of origin. It doesn't matter what language it's in, either, as long as it ain't English. Last year, Australia's submission was in Chinese. (For reals!)

The Academy's committee for this award sorts through the submissions and eventually narrows the field down to a nine-film shortlist. From that list, the five official Oscar nominees are chosen, and then of course there's one winner, which is usually about the Nazis.

Wikipedia has a complete list of this year's submissions, but I'll hit some of the highlights for you after the jump.

  • Bolivia and Puerto Rico both said they weren't submitting anything. Bolivia has submitted five times, all since 1995, including each of the past three years. Puerto Rico has submitted a film eight times since 1986, including the last two years, and even got a nomination in 1989. Come on, Bolivia and Puerto Rico! Even Luxembourg -- the 175th largest independent country in the world -- managed to come up with something!
  • Last year's winning country, Austria (The Counterfeiters), submitted Revanche, about an ex-con who robs a bank and hides at his father's farm. The director, Goetz Spielman, has represented Austria twice before but has never actually gotten a nomination.
  • France holds the record for the most nominations in this category (34), and it holds second place, behind Italy, for number of wins (9). France is also the only country to have submitted an eligible film every single year since the category was introduced in 1956. France's submission this year is Entre les Murs (The Class), about a literature teacher at an inner-city school. It won the Palm d'Or at Cannes this year.
  • Italy (which did not submit films in 1973 or 1980) has been nominated 27 times and has won the Oscar 10 times -- more than any other country. Its submission this year is Gomorra, about violent youth on the streets of Rome. It won the Gran Prix at Cannes.
  • Spain, in third place with 19 nominations and four wins, has submitted Los Girasoles Ciegos (The Blind Sunflowers), about a woman hiding her presumed-dead husband just after the Spanish Civil War. The film has been a big hit in Spain.

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