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