Countdown to the Oscars: Best International Feature

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best International Feature

The nominees are:

Io Capitano

Perfect Days

Society of the Snow

The Teachers’ Lounge

The Zone of Interest

There are two things I want to note before we dive into the nominees here.

First, though a wonderful crop of films, this group of nominees is heavy on European filmmakers, with Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom all represented. Even the Japanese nominee, Perfect Days, is directed by German legend Wim Wenders. We can acknowledge that all of these films are great while also acknowledging that the world is a big place and that an international award should look beyond a single continent.

Second, despite that heavy emphasis on European films, you will notice France is not represented here. How can that be, you ask? Isn’t one of the most well regarded films of the year French? Didn’t it win the Palme d’Or? Isn’t it nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, and Editing – five of the most significant awards – at this very ceremony? All of those things are true about Justine Triet’s masterful Anatomy of a Fall, and yet, it is not nominated among the best international feature films of the year.

Why? Because in its infinite wisdom, the French nominating committee submitted to the Academy as the nation’s representative Tran Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things. This is not the fault of Hùng’s film, which is lovely and has been unfairly maligned as the “film that knocked out Anatomy of a Fall.” It is the fault of a system that insists a nation have only one representative. The best is the best, and artificially limiting your awards to a single entry per country does not lend them any more credibility.

So, yeah, Anatomy of a Fall should probably be here, but it isn’t. Let’s take a look at what is.

Io Capitano

I might end up using the word “harrowing” a lot to describe this particular set of nominees. I’ll try to run to my thesaurus when I have a moment, but there’s really not a better term to describe this story of two Senegalese teenagers who set out on their own to emigrate to Italy. The journey to their goal is methodical and painstaking, and as we watch them, we are awed by their spirit but infuriated by the structures in place that force people to risk their lives in pursuit of something better.

Remarkably, despite widespread critical acclaim throughout his career, director Matteo Garrone had never previously had a film nominated in this category at the Academy Awards. Garrone has a facility for taking epic stories, like this or his gangster picture Gomorrah, and turning them into human stories with stakes that feel earned because we care so deeply about the characters at their centers.

Perfect Days

German-born Wim Wenders has one of the most fascinating directorial careers around. He has bounced back and forth between fiction and documentary, features and shorts. He has directed music videos for U2 and the Talking Heads. He made back-to-back masterpieces in the ‘80s with Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. He has been at the forefront of demonstrating how 3D technology can be incorporated into documentary filmmaking. He’s done it all. So, of course he’ll be at the Academy Awards this year representing Japan. Why wouldn’t he be?

Perfect Days, which won the best actor award at Cannes last year for its lead, Kōji Yakusho, is a quiet, meditative movie about appreciating the little things in life and understanding that beauty is all around us. Yakusho plays a Tokyo toilet cleaner who treats his job with respect and dignity, smiles at strangers, takes pictures of the trees, and generally goes about his day in a seemingly zen-like state of acceptance about the ways of the world. Through the film’s elliptical nature and deliberate pacing, Wenders lulls the audience into a similarly zen-like state. It’s the kind of movie that makes you look at the sky differently when you leave the theater, and that’s a rare quality.

Society of the Snow

And, we’re back to the word “harrowing.” How could we not be? Director J.A. Bayona’s film tells the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Anyone who has seen the U.S. take on this story, 1993’s Alive, knows the basics, but I guarantee you have never seen it told like this. Bayona expertly takes you into the headspace of the survivors, ensuring that you, the viewer, experience the loneliness and desperation of every moment.

There are sequences in this film that beggar belief, including an avalanche that is perhaps the most frightening scene of the year. After the misfire of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it’s great to see Bayona in this mode, pulling triple duty for the first time as writer, director, and producer of Society of the Snow. The film dominated the Goya Awards (the Spanish film industry Oscars) and was a massive hit on Netflix. Hopefully, this success will launch Bayona into the next phase of a wonderful career.

The Teachers’ Lounge

What a taut, disturbing thriller this is. School as a microcosm of society has been done before and done well, but rarely to such devastating effect. Director İlker Çatak’s film is a tale of how the best intentions can easily go awry when we are trapped in systems that leave no room for humanity or empathy. It is about how small actions can have widespread consequences and how, once set in motion, a chain of events can become impossible to stop.

Leonie Benesch, whom you may recognize from her role as a sinister adolescent in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, is stellar as a teacher dealing with pressures from her students, her administration, and her peers after she sets off a firestorm by accusing a fellow staff member of serial theft. Every moment of this film is filled with tension, and we recognize that one wrong move could lead to a dire ending for all involved. For a film that is mostly people sitting in rooms and talking, The Teachers’ Lounge is absolutely riveting. It’s one of the great discoveries, for me, of this Oscars season.

The Zone of Interest

In the history of the Academy Awards, just three films representing the United Kingdom have been nominated in this category and none this century. Of course, this film is in German about a German family and set in Germany. For good measure, it was also filmed there with a fully German cast. Still, London-born director Jonathan Glazer is one of the great modern UK directors, so here we are. The category is called International Feature, and this is about as international as they come.

The Zone of Interest is a masterwork, one of the finest films ever made on the psychology of the people who carried out one of the greatest atrocities in human history. It is also a prescient warning about the world we inhabit. There is evil out there, and it will not be so easy to recognize because it will look like this: business as usual. This kind of casual cruelty did not die with Hitler and his acolytes. When we say, “Never again,” it should not be merely a slogan but an active promise that we will not allow this again. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as elsewhere around the world, are testing us on this promise right now. We should strive not to fail that test.

The final analysis

In four of the past five years, the winner of this award has also been a nominee for Best Picture. In the only year that was not true, none of the nominees was noted in the top category. No film has ever been nominated for both International Feature (formerly Foreign Language Film) and Best Picture and failed to win the international category.

Had Anatomy of the Fall made it into the lineup this year, that would have set up a truly fascinating showdown. Alas, The Zone of Interest is your lone torchbearer, meaning this bit of Academy history is almost certain to remain unchanged. For a spoiler possibility, look to Society of the Snow, which got a huge boost in fans from its lasting success on Netflix, but until we get an exception to prove the rule, we’re just going to have to go by the rule as it stands. Glazer deservedly should have this all sewn up.

Will win: The Zone of Interest

Should win: The Zone of Interest

Should have been here: Anatomy of a Fall

A note about my favorite snub: What more can one say about Justine Triet’s masterpiece? It placed No. 3 on my Top 10 Films of the Year list, one spot ahead of The Zone of Interest. It’s a perfect crime procedural with so much more on its mind than who did what to whom and how. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t come along very often and represents the kind of work we should recognize and appreciate when it crosses our paths.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best International Feature

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best International Feature

The nominees are:

All Quiet on the Western Front

Argentina, 1985

Close

EO

The Quiet Girl

What a tremendous category this year. Top to bottom, just brilliant films. But, then, International Feature is usually a bastion for the best in cinema. It makes sense. Much of the Oscars are devoted to English language movies and run the gamut from great to mediocre across 22 other categories. But, Best International Feature purports to recognize the five greatest accomplishments from an entire world of cinema. Maybe it doesn’t always achieve that lofty goal, but it gets pretty close, and there is nobility in that effort.

This year’s nominated films come from Germany (All Quiet on the Western Front), Argentina (Argentina, 1985), Belgium (Close), Poland (EO), and Ireland (The Quiet Girl). This is the first Irish film ever nominated for International Feature (formerly Foreign Language Film). Belgium, meanwhile, has never had a winner from eight nominations, the last coming in 2013 for The Broken Circle Breakdown.

This is Poland’s third nomination in the past five years and 13th overall. The nation’s first and only win in the category came in 2014 for Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida. Argentina has eight nominations over the years and two wins, the first in 1985 for The Official Story and the more recent in 2009 for The Secret in Their Eyes. The nation was last nominated in 2014 for Wild Tales. The unified Germany (since 1990) has received 12 nominations and won twice, for Nowhere in Africa in 2002 and The Lives of Others in 2006. The most recent nomination came in 2018 for Never Look Away.

All Quiet on the Western Front – It is almost unbelievable that we have never gotten a German adaptation of one of the most famous German novels ever written. But, director and co-writer Edward Berger proved to be the right artist to bring it to the screen. He pulls no punches in depicting the cruelties and barbarism of World War I, while ensuring that we, as an audience, understand that this conflict stands in for all conflicts. The enemy is not a flag or a nation or a people, but rather war, itself.

Close – Lukas Dhont’s devastating meditation on childhood friendship and insecurity is perhaps the closest thing to a challenger for the award this year. It is a beautiful film, well acted, and intimately observed. I found it repetitive toward the end, but that takes nothing away from the depth of the emotions Dhont is able to plumb. 

Argentina, 1985 – In many ways, director Santiago Mitre’s courtroom drama is the most traditional style winner in this category, which is not intended as a knock on the film. It is a stirring David vs. Goliath story about the real-life prosecutors who attempted to put the leaders of Argentina’s military dictatorship on trial for their crimes against the people of the nation. It has much in common with Argentina’s first winner in this category, The Official Story (coincidentally, from 1985), which covers the same territory but from the perspective of a fictional family. Mitre’s film instead stands in for all the Argentine peoples murdered and oppressed under the dictatorship. It is rousing at times, brutally honest at others, and it never shies away from the dangers and contradictions of trying to hold a democracy together.

The Quiet Girl – Based on the novel Foster by Claire Keegan, The Quiet Girl is a tale about what it’s like to grow up without love, then experience it for the first time, and how heartbreaking it would be to have to give that up. The young actress at the center of it all, Catherine Clinch, delivers a remarkable turn as the quiet girl of the title who learns that she is worthy of being cared for and looked after. It is a delicate little film that sneaks up on you, all the way up until its gut punch of a final shot. My wife and I saw it in a half-full theater earlier this week – it is already the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time – and when the credits rolled, there was not a dry eye in the house.

EO – I admit I was unfamiliar with the 84-year-old Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski before EO. There remain glaring gaps in my world film knowledge. But, at least as regards Skolimowski, no more. EO is such a brilliantly observational piece of neorealism that it would be easy to miss how radical it is. It is an experiment in empathy, using the life of a single circus donkey to force us to confront and question the way we approach the natural world. It is a provocation of highest order by a filmmaker whose work I must now seek out in its entirety.

The final analysis

In the past decade, four films have been nominated for both Best Picture and Best International Feature. All Quiet on the Western Front is the fifth. No film has ever been nominated for both awards and failed to win International Feature. Parasite remains the only non-English language film to win both awards, but there will be others. All Quiet probably won’t be the next, but Berger and Co. will be able to console themselves with this almost certain victory.

Will win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Should win: EO

Should have been here: Athena

A note about my favorite snub: I have written about Romain Gavras’ inconceivable achievement with this film a couple of times already in this series. Its technical merits are without equal this year. But, what holds everything together is the story of a family who leads a revolt against the powers that have held down their people. Gavras suggests that the events of the film are simply the first shot of the first battle of a longer war that must be waged.

Next time: Best Director

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film

Sandra Huller in Toni Erdmann, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Foreign Language Film

The nominees are:

Land of Mine

A Man Called Ove

The Salesman

Tanna

Toni Erdmann

At the core of all these films is forgiveness. Land of Mine asks if we can forgive the most horrific crimes against humanity in order to keep a piece of ours. A Man Called Ove asks if we can forgive a world that has treated us unfairly and snatched away the only thing we cared about. The Salesman asks if we can forgive the man who harmed our family when vengeance is within our grasp. Tanna asks if we can forgive a generations-old grudge and forge a new future with our most hated adversaries. Toni Erdmann asks if we can forgive our parents for their faults and recognize them as just as human as we are.

This is a group of five wonderful films with a lot to say about the world in which we live. Their stories are not only about forgiveness but about sexism, abuse of power, tolerance, prejudice, hope, healing, love, humanity, decency, and so much more. Yet, when one looks at the world today and sees the direction in which things are headed, it perhaps does not seem so bad to focus, just a little extra, on forgiveness. That may be the only way to make it out of these times with our own decency intact.

The Salesman (directed by Asghar Farhadi) – The elephant in the room is that of the Elephant Party and its racist, un-American, and inhumane travel ban. The current presidential administration’s ban on travelers from seven of this world’s nations includes Iranian filmmaker Farhadi, as well as his cast and crew (one of the lead performers in A Man Called Ove also would be banned). The administration deigned to offer the director a waiver to allow him into their country – which is not their country, by the way – but Mr. Farhadi’s dignity is not for sale, and he will not be attending the ceremony. My understanding is the other filmmakers in this category convened to discuss a gesture of support for their absent comrade, and to that I say bravo.

Outside the context of world events, The Salesman is an excellent psychological thriller that refuses ever to do the obvious thing. It zigs where one expects it to zag, and ultimately, the film, which starts off about the quest for vengeance, becomes a parable about the power and necessity of forgiveness. Now put that story in the context of world events and see where you stand.

This is just Iran’s third film to compete in this category and the second by Farhadi, who won this award in 2011 for A Separation. He is not only a great Iranian filmmaker but a master of the form in any language. This would be a deserving winner in any year, but in the political context of this nation, right now, to award a film this universal and this human, I can think of no better protest.

Toni Erdmann (directed by Maren Ade) – The prohibitive frontrunner for this award, Toni Erdmann is an epic built on its smallest moments. Writer-director Ade crafts a film of quiet elegance that is also downright hilarious, exploring the relationship between a woman trying to navigate the world of international business and her prankster father who just wants her to live her life a little. The film has a lot to say in its three-hour runtime about sexism in the workplace, as well as ethically murky business practices, and it takes these subjects very seriously. However, it is also a heartwarming father-daughter comedy punctuated by some of the funniest gags you will see in any movie this year.

The lead performances by Sandra Hüller as the daughter and Peter Simonischek as the father are magnificent, and it is a treat to watch them gingerly navigate a relationship both need but of which both are wary. This is a film that loves its props and visual gags, but apart from being laugh-out-loud funny, those gags serve as a way to chart the relationship between the two characters. I can assure you never before have comedy fake teeth been used to generate more genuine emotion than in this film.

Germany’s Oscar history is muddled by the time a dangerously psychotic world leader built a wall. … I’ll just let that hang there for a moment. … West Germany scored eight nominations in this category, while East Germany was also cited once. Since the reunification, German filmmakers have been nominated another 10 times, bringing the total to 19, which would tie with Spain for third-most all time behind Italy and France. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others was the most recent German winner, and there is a strong chance Ade will be the next.

A Man Called Ove (directed by Hannes Holm) – If any of these films can be called crowd-pleasing, this would be it, and by the standards of this category, it is a blockbuster. With $3.4 million in box-office receipts, it made more than double what the other four nominees have earned combined (at the time of this writing). Though three of the other films remain in theaters, it is likely this will remain top dog from a financial standpoint. When it comes to awards and the Academy in particular, financial success is never a bad thing for two reasons: First, voters like to reward success, and second, it means more people are likely to have seen your movie.

Holm’s direction is crisp and breezy, telling the story of Ove (Rolf Lassgård), who bitterly shuts out the world after the death of his wife but slowly allows himself to be drawn into a community. Like others of its ilk, particularly those films coming out of Sweden, it walks a thin line between comedy and drama, often refusing to distinguish between the two. Like Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and Felix Herngren’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – though not so cumbersomely titled – A Man Called Ove finds humor in the tragedy of life and tragedy in the hilarity of it.

As a nation, Sweden resides comfortably alongside Italy, France, Japan, and Spain in the top five of most wins, most nominations, and most submissions in the Foreign Language category. From 15 nominations, Swedish filmmakers have picked up this award three times. Actually, strike that. One Swedish filmmaker has picked up this award three times – the great Ingmar Bergman. Bergman is the only Swedish director to earn the gold here, and it is an understandably high bar for any other Swedish filmmaker to clear. Holm has a very real opportunity to do just that this year.

Tanna (directed by Martin Butler and Bentley Dean) – Set against the backdrop of a remote South Pacific Island, lush with rainforest and dominated by an active volcano, Tanna is a classical Shakespearean drama brought to life in a richly detailed, authentically felt new way. Two warring tribes forge a fragile peace and agree to exchange brides. However, one of the girls offered, Wawa (Marie Wawa), runs off with her lover, Dain (Mungau Dain), and the young couple is hunted by both tribes.

The story of the film is ostensibly true, and members of the Yakel tribe, to which Wawa and Dain belong, are asked to tell it in their own words (using the native Nauvhal language). If there are elements of Romeo and Juliet in here, then there, too, are elements of tribal ritual, mysticism, and natural communion. Butler and Dean pull all of these elements together to bring to light a story of tolerance, peace, and forgiveness, the roots of which apply to all peoples the world over.

This is the first Australian film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and the filmmakers deserve credit for not imposing an imperial or western point of view on the film. It may be an Australian production – and kudos to the Australian committee for submitting to the Academy such a beautiful film about an underrepresented population – but this film belongs to the Yakel tribe and the people of Vanuatu who make the story sing. They bring truth, energy, and intensity to a story as old as storytelling itself.

Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet) – Harrowing is perhaps the only apt descriptor for this film about German POWs forced to remove the landmines from Danish beaches. The beauty of Land of Mine, which Zandvliet wrote and directed, is that it operates on both a purely visceral level and a resolutely intellectual one. It is a nerve-fraying experience to watch young boys uncover and disarm landmines buried in the sand, and Zandvliet rings every ounce of tension out of the situation. However, this is not the filmmaker’s only goal, and had it been, Land of Mine would not be half the movie it is.

The layers of guilt and blame and horror and pain stack one on top of the other throughout this film. There is never a question what we are witnessing is cruel and unusual punishment at least, a war crime at worst.  Make no mistake, these are captured Nazi soldiers, perpetrators and defenders of a system of unspeakable evils, but they are also teenage boys who cry out for their mothers and just want to go home.

Nazism is one of the worst horrors ever visited upon humanity, and to their captors, these boys represent that horror, no matter how small or large a hand they may have played in it. Rightly or wrongly, these boys will pay for their nation’s crimes against humanity, but to do so, their punishers must forfeit their own humanity. Yet I am in no position to judge, and if I am ever called upon to answer for the crimes of my country, I may think it unfair, but I will not be at a loss to understand the motivation.

Denmark has a solid history with the Oscars, scoring three wins from 12 nominations, and its recent history is even better. The Danes have landed a nominee in this category six times in the past 11 years and four of the past five. The most recent winner was Susanne Bier in 2010 for In a Better World. Land of Mine is an unquestionably difficult sit, and as evidenced by its paltry box-office take, it seems audiences are of wary of it. I won’t say they needn’t be, but its virtues are so great and its message so important it demands to be seen anyway.

The final analysis

On general acclaim and critical success, Toni Erdmann seems like the most likely winner. Out of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, it was the talk of the town and remained that way month after month. Ade even picked up a number of Best Director mentions on the critics awards circuit. The film is both entertaining and intelligent and would make a handsome winner.

Here, however, I will go against the consensus. Oscar ballots only reached voters hands in the last week, and the zeitgeist film of the moment is The Salesman, given its relevance to world events. That newsiness will almost certainly put more voters in seats to see the film – whether in theaters or at home on screener – and once they see it, its power will be hard to deny. If you are trying to win an Oscar pool, Toni Erdmann is the safe bet, but my gut tells me the Academy will see fit to honor the Iranian master Farhadi, both for his wonderful film and for what that honor would mean.

Will win: The Salesman

Should win: Land of Mine

Should have been here: The Handmaiden

Tomorrow: Best Live Action Short

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent is the first Colombian film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Foreign Language Film

The nominees are:

Embrace of the Serpent

Mustang

Son of Saul

Theeb

A War

Profile matters as much as anything when it comes to Best Foreign Language Film. If voters hear a movie is good or read high praise from critics, they are more likely to seek it out – as would be true of any of us. So, films that have earned critical accolades, international recognition at film festivals, and some moderate box-office success have a leg up on the competition in this category.

The two highest-profile films in this lineup are Son of Saul and Mustang. Son of Saul has been the presumed frontrunner most of the year, ever since it won four awards, including the Grand Jury Prize, at the Cannes Film Festival. It picked up the lion’s share of critics’ awards and won the Golden Globe for foreign language film. It is also the only film among these to make more than $1 million at the U.S. box office, though two of these just opened in theaters this month.

Mustang also was a prizewinner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, its cast and director have been everywhere promoting the film and its urgent message, and it is second behind Son of Saul in box-office take. It has also been a huge success on the film festival circuit around the world, picking up prizes for its director, its cast, and its singular vision and voice. Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), Theeb (Jordan), and A War (Denmark) have all enjoyed tremendous success in their home countries, but their U.S. appeal has been limited so far, which means we are likely looking at either Son of Saul or Mustang for the win.

Son of Saul (directed by László Nemes) – With Son of Saul, first-time feature director Nemes has immediately announced himself as a director to watch. Not only is his film emotionally devastating, but it is technically masterful. Told almost entirely from a subjective point of view, it follows a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz as he attempts to give his son a proper burial before a prison break. The camera wizardry puts the viewer directly in the place of Saul as he navigates the physical and mental torture of the Holocaust and tries to complete one final act of good amid the horror.

It is a taxing but rewarding experience, a first-person take on the Holocaust unlike any ever before attempted in fiction. It puts the audience on the ground level of an atrocity, trading on the oft-cited maxim that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic. Son of Saul shows us the tragedy of a single death within the context of the unimaginable suffering of untold millions. Star Géza Röhrig gives one of the best leading-man performances of the year with 90 percent of the movie playing out in just a tight close-up on his face. Rarely has so much pain been so viscerally communicated onscreen.

This is just the ninth Hungarian film ever nominated in this category at the Oscars, and four of those previous nominations came by way of director István Szabó. Szabó also directed the only Hungarian film to win this award, Mephisto in 1981. If this film is any indication, though, Hungarian cinema will find its way back to the Oscars, and it will be led by Nemes.

Mustang (directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven) – One of the best films of the year, Mustang is about what happens when we let culture and custom subvert our basic humanity. It tells the story of five sisters in a small Turkish village whose family tries to tame them after the smallest of infractions and how the sisters fight back against their oppressors. That such injustices are allowed to carry on in the civilized world today should infuriate us as there is no room in society for these outdated beliefs.

Apart from the vital storytelling, Ergüven, on her first feature, proves to be a master filmmaker with subtle, inspired direction that draws on a wide range of influences to achieve a wholly unique effect. Ergüven slowly tightens the noose around her protagonists until they must choose whether to be hanged or take up arms and cut the rope. The film walks a fine line between triumph and tragedy, and its bold, brilliant closing passages seem to imply the two are not so far removed from one another.

Despite being set in Turkey and all of the film’s dialogue being spoken in Turkish, Mustang is actually France’s submission to the Oscars this year. Of course, France has a long history in the Foreign Language category. This is the country’s record 39th nomination, and with 12 wins, it trails only Italy (14).

Embrace of the Serpent (directed by Ciro Guerra) – Like an Alejandro Jodorowsky dream filtered through a Werner Herzog nightmare, Embrace of the Serpent is a hallucinatory trip through the Amazon. It stuns with the beauty of its images, but it stays with you because of the strength of its ideas. The film follows somewhat parallel stories of white outsiders coming into the Colombian jungles and seeking a mythical plant the natives believe has healing properties.

Based loosely on the diaries of German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg, Embrace of the Serpent is a damning exploration of the destruction European settlers brought down upon the forests. The gorgeous black-and-white photography helps orient the viewer within the denseness of the jungle, while the script never lets the audience get too comfortable in its loyalties. Questions of who is good and who is bad matter little. In the end, it comes down to who respects the natural order of the world and who does not.

This is the first Colombian film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, and it represents a stunning achievement in the national cinema. There has to be a first, but rarely is that first so impressive and so deserving as this.

A War (directed by Tobias Lindholm) – About 80 percent of A War’s nearly two-hour runtime goes by before we get to the central conflict of the story. By the time the film arrives at its main plot, we are so invested in all the characters and so deep in their headspace it becomes devastating to watch them deal with the moral quandary in which they find themselves.

Lindholm’s storytelling patience allows the audience to get involved with the characters in a far more intimate way than we are used to in a more traditional war film. By doing so, the film’s pre-climactic action sequence is more effective than it otherwise would be because the stakes are not based in vaguely defined patriotism but in family ties and personal responsibility. These are people we can relate to in circumstances we could not begin to imagine, and Lindholm carefully outlines what it means to be a soldier and a human being at the same time.

Denmark has had 11 films nominated in the Foreign Language category with three winners. The most recent winner was Susanne Bier’s In a Better World in 2010, while Danish legend Thomas Vinterberg was the most recent nominee in 2013 with The Hunt, which Lindholm actually co-wrote with Vinterberg.

Theeb (directed by Naji Abu Nowar) – Nowar is the third director among this group to have never directed a feature film before. Of the three, this is the one that feels most like a first film from a storytelling perspective. The photography is beautiful, and the setting – the Ottoman Empire during World War I – orients the audience in a highly specific place and time, but the structure is too loose to be totally engaging.

A young Bedouin boy, Theeb (Jacie Eid Al-Hwietat), tags along as his brother leads a British soldier through the desert. Along the way, they encounter bandits, and the mission becomes one of survival. The film’s themes of loyalty, manhood, and pride are all quite striking, but the plot has little forward momentum and gets bogged down in its middle section.

This is the first Jordanian film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and is just the second ever submitted to the Academy. Hopefully, the honor will encourage more development in Jordanian cinema and create more attention for an area of the world that is sadly underrepresented in the film landscape.

The final analysis

I have no good reason to think this other than just a gut feeling, but this category feels ripe for an upset. Son of Saul has won every meaningful precursor – and for that matter, almost every award out there – but it perhaps inspires more appreciation than passion. In that case, Mustang would be the likely beneficiary of an upset. However, experience tells me, with few exceptions – such as 2006 when Pan’s Labyrinth lost out to The Lives of Others – the most likely winner prevails. This year, that means Son of Saul.

Will win: Son of Saul

Should win: Mustang

Should have been here: The Tribe

Tomorrow: Best Animated Feature

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film

The Polish film Ida is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Foreign Language Film

The nominees are:

Ida

Leviathan

Tangerines

Timbuktu

Wild Tales

Not that anybody asked me, but I think Federico Fellini is the greatest film director of all time. If you would like to discuss that ranking, I am happy to have that conversation another time, but for now, all that matters is that the greatest director of all time never won a competitive Oscar (if your loyalties lie elsewhere, feel free to insert Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa in place of Fellini). He was nominated in the screenplay categories eight times and four times for best director, but he never won, though he did receive a lifetime achievement award in 1993.

Fellini died later that year after receiving his honorary award, so you may be wondering why I would bring up a director who has been dead more than 20 years. Well, I will tell you. Despite never winning an Oscar in his unparalleled career, Fellini directed four films that were nominated for and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. However, since its inception at the 1956 ceremony, the award has officially gone to the country of origin and not the filmmaker. No longer.

Beginning with this year’s ceremony, the Oscar statuette for Best Foreign Language Film will have the director’s name engraved on it along with the country of origin. The change has been a long time coming. Though the Academy of course will not be retroactively awarding the directors of past winners in this category, future winners will have the privilege of not succumbing to the same Oscar fate as some of the medium’s greats. It is impossible to say if any of this year’s nominees is the next Fellini or Kurosawa, but if they are, the Academy can take pride in having rewarded them here.

Ida (directed by Pawel Pawlikowski) – In spite of a tremendous cinematic heritage that includes greats such as Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski, no Polish film has ever won the award for Best Foreign Language Film. Pawlikowski’s small but potent Ida seems set to break that streak. Concerning an orphan raised to be a Catholic nun who finds out her true heritage just days before she is to take her final vows, Ida is a story of faith and forgiveness in a world where both of those qualities are seen as weaknesses.

Gorgeously shot – the film is also nominated for Best Cinematography – and stunningly told, Ida is one of the true gems of the year. Pawlikowski’s film is tiny in scope but big on ideas and has a clear moral center that is never muddied thanks to the straightforward plot and no-frills filmmaking. It is a true testament to the power of a good story well told.

Leviathan (directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev) – I do not know that there is much more I can say about Leviathan, my No. 1 film of the year. It is a dark, brooding masterpiece that is filled to the brim with pitch-black humor, hardline political commentary, and riveting drama. Zvyagintsev speaks for a generation of Russians who came of age under communist rule and who are now watching the country slip back into extremism and antagonism. Zyviagintsev and his cast and crew take all the anger they feel over the current governmental situation and spew it back out as bile onto the screen.

The film follows Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), who simply by living his life runs afoul of the local mayor. He compounds his problems by attempting to fight back against the crushing behemoth that is the Russian governmental bureaucracy. He winds up in a downward spiral of despair, from which he seeks solace in religion. He finds none. Zyagintsev’s film is an uncompromising descent into the bleakness of a country ruled by a power structure that sees no citizens, just enemies. He provides no easy answers and no happy endings because when you come face to face with the leviathan, your best hope is a quick end.

Timbuktu (directed by Abderrahmane Sissako) – Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) is a cattle herder who lives with his family outside the city of Timbuktu. The city is controlled by a strict Muslim regime that imposes its will on the citizens of the town in increasingly draconian and absurd ways. Living among the dunes, Kidane and his family have mostly been sheltered from the violence and oppression of the city, but such peace cannot last long in this place.

Timbuktu has already had a good week. The first film from Mauritania to be nominated for an Academy Award, Sissako’s critically beloved drama about faith and freedom just won seven Caesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, including best feature and best director. This is the kind of important, hard-hitting film voters like to reward in this category for bringing a faraway struggle to light for the world to see.

Wild Tales (directed by Damián Szifrón) – Argentina has had the most success in this category of any of this year’s nominated countries with two previous wins, including as recently as 2009 for The Secret in Their Eyes. Szifrón’s odd, darkly comic anthology film had been tapped by some as the film to beat this year before the nominations were even released, but against this set of this set of films, Wild Tales seems perhaps the slightest and least likely winner.

Composed of six standalone stories, any one of which would have made an intriguing Best Live Action Short nominee, Wild Tales is a simultaneously thought-provoking and humorous meditation on violence and vengeance. Despite its often dark subject matter, Szifrón’s film is easily the most enjoyable sit of the five nominated pictures just from an entertainment standpoint, and that cannot be underestimated when it comes to guessing what Academy voters may choose.

Tangerines (directed by Zaza Urushadze) – Tangerines reminds more than a little of 2001 Best Foreign Language Film winner No Man’s Land, which also concerns soldiers from opposing sides of a conflict trapped together in the middle of a battlefield. Writer-director Urushadze throws in the added twist that the combatants are being housed by a neutral third party, raising questions about the nature of war and the reality of collateral damage.

An Estonian village is caught in the middle of an uprising against the Georgian government. The village is deserted, except for two men, one of whom will leave as soon as he has harvested his tangerine crops. After a particularly bloody battle, the wounded are left behind in the village, and Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) takes them into his home. It is a classic story about two sides of a conflict finding they have more in common than they would have thought, helped along by someone caught in the middle who sees the absurdity of it all. Tangerines is the first film from Estonia nominated in this category and certainly fits on this list.

The final analysis

Though Wild Tales is the most outright enjoyable of the nominees just for delivering the wild ride its title promises, voters tend not to be swayed by such considerations when making their choices. Plenty of popular films from well known directors have been nominated in this category but went home empty-handed because voters opted for more challenging or esoteric choices. If any film is going to surprise in this group, Timbuktu is the most likely candidate.

Ida is the frontrunner here, having picked up the majority of the early season awards, though Leviathan earned the Golden Globe for best foreign language film. Leviathan’s Golden Globe triumph stands as my single favorite moment of the Oscar season thus far, and if it pulls off the mild upset with the Academy, it would be easily my favorite win of the night. Ultimately, the low-key charms of Ida should rule the day.

Will win: Ida

Should win: Leviathan

Wish it had been here: Force Majeure