For Your Consideration... The Best Foreign Language Film Award Goes To...

Wouldn't you like one of
these golden statues?

For those of you who are reading this from the United States, we're going to talk a little bit about the Oscars. For those of you who are reading from almost everywhere else, I hope you can learn a little about our big film awards event that determines the few foreign films that most Americans have the opportunity of seeing.

You've undoubtedly heard the buzz about the Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, taking place this upcoming Sunday, and I bet you know about the top pictures that are nominated, like American Hustle, Gravity, and Captain Phillips. But, how much do you know about any of the films in the Best Foreign Language Film category and how that works?

In order for a film to be nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category, each country's film board or top film producers (depending on the country) get together and decide which movie will best represent them in the United States and what they think is most worthy of receiving an award. There are a number of rules for the films to follow, but one of the biggest ones is that the film cannot be in English for a majority of the movie (which might make it extremely difficult for British films to be a contender). Once a country selects its most representative film, it is submitted, voted upon by members of the Academy, and hopefully becomes a contender in the Academy Award race.

I am an extremely large fan of that category in the Oscars, as the movies that are nominated usually become much easier to find in the States. So far, The Great Beauty looks like the front runner for Best Foreign Language Film, as it won at the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards. But here are some short synopses for all the films nominated, so hopefully you will see something that strikes your interest (all synopses are pulled from IMDb.com).

The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium, 2012): Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight, in spite of their differences. He talks, she listens. He's a romantic atheist, she's a religious realist. When their daughter becomes seriously ill, their love is put on trial.

The Hunt (Denmark, 2012): A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son's custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

The Great Beauty (Italy, 2013): Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

The Missing Picture (Cambodia, 2013): Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

Omar (Palestine, 2013): A young Palestinian freedom fighter agrees to work as an informant after he's tricked into an admission of guilt by association in the wake of an Israeli soldier's killing.

And in addition, here are some movies that were left out of the Oscar race, but were nominated for a Golden Globe or in other award ceremonies around the world...

The Past (Iran, 2013): An Iranian man deserts his French wife and two children to return to his homeland. Meanwhile, his wife starts up a new relationship, a reality her husband confronts upon his wife's request for a divorce.



Blue is the Warmest Color (France, 2013): Adele's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself and ultimately finds herself through love and loss.

The Wind Rises (Japan, 2013): An animated look at the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed Japanese fighter planes during World War II.  

Tsotsi

Directed by Gavin Hood

(2006) - South Africa

As I started this movie, I realized that it was not only my first South African movie, but my first African movie. Africa is a rather large continent and has a vast number of cultures, yet in the US, you don’t hear much (or anything really) about any of the movies that are being made there, despite Nigeria having one of the largest recent production records in the world.

Tsotsi won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture back in 2006. Tsotsi, meaning thug in the street language of South Africa, is the nickname given to the protagonist. Tsotsi really lives up to that name… he’s the leader of a gang in one of Johannesburg’s shantytowns and is involved in some pretty serious violence for being so young; armed robbery, murder, and theft. Late at night, he attempts to steal a car from a wealthy family and does so successfully. He gets on the road, wrecks the car, and soon discovers that there is an infant in the back seat and has to decide what to do about the child.

Throughout this movie, Tsotsi and the other characters use a local street language, a blend of some of the almost one dozen national languages of South Africa. These local languages all became official after the end of Apartheid, showing that one language wasn't considered more important than another. Twenty years later, English has become the dominant language that is taught in schools, while the other languages are still used but to a lesser degree. This vast array of spoken language isn't just found in South Africa but all over the African continent. While there are one or two national languages in many countries, that doesn't guarantee that the general population is fluent in it, but they might speak something else entirely.

Now that I've gotten my first taste of African film, I'm curious to see how other movies deal with language. There are thousands of languages spoken in Africa and even more dialects within those languages... so how does a filmmaker choose which language to use in a movie? And if they only use one language or a mix of languages, does that limit the span of their potential audience? For someone watching a subtitled version of the movie, this might not make a difference, but I wonder if it does for someone watching without subtitles who is from the region where the film is made.

For Your Consideration... Inglorious Basterds

Yes, you have come to the right place, and this is a foreign film blog (for those of you in the United States). So why am I discussing Inglorious Basterds, you might ask?

I’ve told a lot of people about this blog I am doing… they said that it sounds cool and all, but they aren’t crazy about movies with subtitles. So then I asked if they liked Inglorious Basterds, and I got a lot of, “Oh yeah, that movie is great!” So the funny thing about that movie is that Tarantino successfully snuck in a ton of subtitles, but you barely noticed. You were super interested in the story and it made sense for them to not use English the entire time, so you made it all the way through this 153-minute (or 2 hours and 33 minutes) movie.

This scene is in German.
Did you notice when you were watching it?

Television and movies have their similarities, but there is also usually one large difference. Whereas many TV shows are dialogue heavy (like sitcoms, for instance), movies are usually more about the visuals, meaning someone will throw a plate at the wall when they are mad versus yelling, “I am mad as hell!” (unless you’re watching the movie, Network). Because of this, that means there is already that much less “reading” when watching a foreign film. 

You’ve read a few posts here and there, and you’ve thought the movie sounds interesting. Well, now that I just told you that Inglorious Basterds was subtitle-heavy and you barely realized it, give a few of them a chance… you might be surprised what amazing stories are out there that you’re missing out on.

If you like The Money Pit, you will love...

Death at a Funeral – England (2007)

Now, let me start off by saying that I mean the British version of this movie with Game of Throne's Peter Dinklage and most definitely not the American version with Chris Rock (it may have been okay, but I have not seen it).

This movie couldn't be set at a more somber event... a funeral. Daniel is put in charge of organizing his father's wake and things couldn't go any, er, worse. A family secret is on the brink of exposure and just when you think one tiny thing goes wrong, the next domino falls, setting off a whole chain of events. Can Daniel keep the funeral seemingly together for all of its guests or will it go down in flames?

This movie is outrageously funny, and just when you think you have a chance to stop laughing, you've gotten ahead of yourself. Roger Ebert said, "The movie is part farce, part slapstick and part just plain wacky eccentricity." If you've ever seen a British comedy and liked it, I think this is definitely a film to put on your lists.