2014 Oscar Entries for Best Foreign Language Film
by Keith Widyolar
The 2014 Oscars (86th Academy Awards) honoring the best films of 2013, will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres on ABC March 2, 2014 at 7pm.
On September 5, 2013, the Academy announced the three nominees who will be presented with an Academy Honorary Award, including Italian costume designer Piero Tosi.
76 countries submitted films in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category by the October 1, 2013 deadline. Nine films made the January shortlist. Paul Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” is the only film from a Latin country to make the shortlist.
Films made in Latin countries are very much in contrast to the guns, girls and gadgets formula of contemporary Hollywood. Looking at these films, you can see how directors are processing or reconciling their country’s past and present, even the Europeans. Contemporary Latin cinema is cathartic and says a lot about the countries themselves.
These are the submissions from Latin countries.
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Latin European Entries
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Latin American Entries
Argentina
“The German Doctor” (Wakolda)
Lucía Puenzo’s fictionalized story of an Argentine family in 1960 Patagonia who discover that the kind man in their boarding house who has grown close to their daughter is the “Angel of Death” himself, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (Germany, 1911-1979) who escaped to Argentina after the war. Starring Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti and Alex Brendemühl.
Brazil
“Neighboring Sounds” (O Som Ao Redor)
Kleber Mondonça Filho’s meditation on contemporary life in an urban neighborhood of Recife, a beach town and Brazil’s fifth largest city. Filho uses architecture and sounds to explore the simmering class tensions that though a legacy of Brazil’s past continue to govern its present.
