| What would surprise you more on Oscar nominations morning — three international films nominated for best picture or all five international feature nominees coming from the same company? |
| Either way, we're heading toward a banner year for global cinema at the Academy Awards, which shouldn't be a problem since these days everyone watches TV with the subtitles on. |
| I'm Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Get your passports out. We're heading overseas. |
The global Oscars are here to stay |
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| Renate Reinsve, left, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in "Sentimental Value." (Neon) |
| The last two years we've had two international features nominated for best picture. "Anatomy of a Fall" and "The Zone of Interest" made the cut in 2024; "Emilia Pérez" and "I'm Still Here" found their way in last year. |
| Two nominees in one year is the record, an achievement that's likely to be surpassed in a couple of weeks, thanks, in part, to the savvy (and spending) of adventurous indie studio Neon. The distribution and production company could also score another achievement, sweeping the five spots for the Oscars' international feature film category. |
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| Neon's contending quintet is led by Jafar Panahi's "It Was Just an Accident," a withering takedown of the cruelty and corruption of authoritarianism, and Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value," a drama about a family reckoning with its past. |
| Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker recently sentenced in absentia to a year in prison on charges of "propaganda activities against the system," figures to earn nominations for writing and directing "It Was Just an Accident." Trier could receive nominations in those same categories, and three of the movie's actors — Stellan Skarsgård, playing a legendary director angling for a comeback, and Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as his daughters — figure to pick up nods as well. A fourth, Elle Fanning portraying an A-list actor who becomes entangled in the family drama, also has a shot. |
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| Wagner Moura in "The Secret Agent." (Neon) |
| Then there's "The Secret Agent," a Brazilian political thriller that has gained momentum since winning international feature honors from both the Los Angeles and New York film critics. Its star, Wagner Moura, took best actor at Cannes and has leapfrogged over early favorites George Clooney and Dwayne Johnson in the less-than-robust lead actor race. |
| "Secret Agent" writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho could also join Panahi and Trier in the original screenplay category. Picking up a mention in casting on the Oscar shortlists also bodes well for the movie's best picture prospects. |
| No movie received more of a bump from the shortlists than French-born Spanish director Oliver Laxe's road trip thriller "Sirāt," which scored five mentions — international feature, sound, cinematography, casting and original score. "Sirāt" gave us the year's most visceral viewing experience, though not everyone appreciated its quasi-apocalyptic shocks. But the film's fans are passionate and, judging from those shortlist hat tips, plentiful. Once watched, "Sirāt" is a movie you don't forget. |
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| (Neon) |
| Conversely, Park Chan-wook's playful noirish thriller "No Other Choice" received no other shortlist mentions other than international feature. Park's stylish movies ("The Handmaiden," "Decision to Leave") have been shut out at the Oscars over the years, making him long overdue for recognition. The movie's ingenious twists also make it a strong candidate for an adapted screenplay nomination. (Park wrote the film with Seo-kyeong Jeong, based on the Donald Westlake novel "The Ax.") |
| Those five movies could lock down the international feature category for Neon, the logical outgrowth of a core commitment to global cinema that the company has had since its inception. In its nine-year existence, Neon has released more than 40 international films, including the 2020 best picture winner "Parasite," the first non-English language movie to take the top Oscar. "Parasite" also marked the beginning of the company's streak of Cannes Palme d'Or winners, which, with "It Was Just an Accident" last year, now stands at six. |
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| Lee Byung Hun in the movie "No Other Choice." (Neon) |
| Heady stuff, and that's not mentioning the fact that Neon led all studios with 21 nominations at the upcoming Golden Globes. |
| Expect these trends to continue. Twenty-four percent of the motion picture academy's membership now lives outside the United States. Of the 534 people invited to join this year, 55% are from international countries and territories. American studios have, by and large, stopped making the kinds of movies that would merit Oscar consideration and continue consolidating, reducing production. |
| You've got to vote for something and, increasingly, the most appealing options come from overseas. |
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| The problem now for Neon will be how to allocate resources and mount phase-two Oscar campaigns for so many movies. It's a dilemma every studio would like to have this time of year. |
More coverage of international features |
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