I approve 8 of the 9 shortlisted film's vying for the foreign film Oscar. I don't particularly like the German entry, but the rest are well-deserved:
Pawel Pawlikowski‘s "Cold War" (Poland), Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra‘s "Birds of Passage" (Columbia), Gustav Moller‘s "The Guilty" (Denmark), Florian_Henckel von Donnersmarck "Never Look Away" (Germany), Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s "Shoplifters" (Japan), Nadine Labaki‘s "Capernaum" (Lebanon), Alfonso Cuaron‘s "Roma" (Mexico), Sergey Dvortsevoy‘s "Ayka" (Kazakhstan) and Lee Chang-dong‘s "Burning" (South Korea).
However, what happened to Lukas Dhont‘s "Girl" (Netflix). It won Un Certain Regard's performance award and the Camera d’Or as well. How about Italian director Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” a film which will surely be on my top ten list in 2019. How about Ali Abbasi “Border” (Neon), a gender-bending Swedish entry which wowed critics at Cannes and all but cemented itself as a hybrid groundbreaker.