This afternoon, the Academy released the shortlists for the 2024 Oscars. Let’s zero in on the category that most interests us: Best International Film.
Not many surprises to report. Critically acclaimed films such as Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”, Ilker Çatak’s “The Teacher’s Lounge”, Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” Tran Anh Hung’s “The Taste of Things” and Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” made the cut.
Snubbed submissions include “Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World” (Romania), “The Settlers” (Chile), “About Dry Grasses” (Turkey), “Shayda” (Australia) and “The Delinquents” (Argentina). Most of these deserved to be there.
This year, 88 countries submitted a film. As always, Academy members from all branches were invited to participate in the preliminary round of voting and needed to watch 13 submissions to be eligible to vote in the category.
The 15 selected shortlisted films are as follows:
Armenia, “Amerikatsi”
Bhutan, “The Monk and the Gun”
Denmark, “The Promised Land”
Finland, “Fallen Leaves”
France, “The Taste of Things”
Germany, “The Teachers’ Lounge”
Iceland, “Godland”
Italy, “Io Capitano”
Japan, “Perfect Days”
Mexico, “Totem”
Morocco, “The Mother of All Lies”
Spain, “Society of the Snow”
Tunisia, “Four Daughters”
Ukraine, “20 Days in Mariupol”
United Kingdom, “The Zone of Interest”
The nominating process for this category is and has always been ridiculous. It needs to be reformed. The first thing I would do is to actually stop letting countries decide what film they want to submit. Let the voters decided instead.
If it were up to me, the 15 best foreign-language films that premiered in 2023, in no particular order, have been:
Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, Thomas Cailley’s Le Regne Animal, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, Eric Gravel’s A Plein Temps, Felipe Galvez’ The Settlers, Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot-au-Feu, Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves.