Foreign Language Oscar Submissions

Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series spotlights films from nations that have rarely, if ever, been nominated for the award. With submissions from countries including Mongolia, Vietnam, Australia, Tunisia, Palestine, Romania, North Macedonia, and Turkey, this collection of films seeks to advance a more diverse vision of contemporary world cinema than has been historically presented at the Academy Awards.

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Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan & India

The first installment of Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and India.

Chaitanya Tamhane's debut feature Court dismantles the labyrinthine structure of India's legal system, tracing the case of a folk singer accused of abetting a stranger's suicide through one of his performances. Akan Satayev's The Road to Mother offers a resonant perspective on motherhood in a decades-spanning narrative set in Kazakhstan. Sergey Dvortsevoy's ebullient narrative debut Tulpan captures the rhythms of nomadic existence on a serene, isolated stretch of the Kazakh steppes; Byambasuren Davaa's The Cave of the Yellow Dog explores the tensions between tradition and modernity on the Mongolian highlands. Afia Nathaniel's Dukhtar embarks on a journey through northern Pakistan, as a desperate mother flees everything she has known in a perilous attempt to save her daughter from an arranged marriage.

In the 64 years since the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film has existed, only 28 nations have ever been represented onstage. Mongolia has submitted a film six times, and Pakistan ten—neither have been nominated. With dozens of submissions, India has been nominated just three times. Kazakhstan has submitted 12 films to the Oscars since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991—the nation was nominated for the first and only time in 2007, for Sergei Bodrov's Mongol.

Thailand, Vietnam & China

The second installment of Filmatique’s Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Thailand, Vietnam and China. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Headshot explores Buddhist themes of karma and retribution through the inverted perspective of its protagonist, a wayward cop. Philippe Muyl's The Nightingale follows an old man and his grandson on a picturesque journey though China's rural Guangxi Province. A special screening of The Scent of Green Papaya rounds out the collection as the only Vietnamese film ever to be nominated for the Oscar.

Romania, Poland & Hungary

The third installment of Filmatique’s Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Romania, Poland, and Hungary.

Călin Peter Netzer's Golden Bear-winning Child's Pose is a riveting class commentary set in Romania; Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert's Never Gonna Snow Again weaves an elliptical, magical-realist journey of a Ukrainian masseur and his misadventures within a well-to-do Polish gated community. Attila Till's Kills on Wheels features three wheelchair-bound assassins in a thrilling crime-comedy, promoting narratives of the differently-abled amid a media landscaping that is woefully lacking in their representation. Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu journeys into the liminal space between life and death, as a sickly widower is shuttled through Bucharest's labyrinthine hospital system.

In the 64 years since the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film has existed, only 28 nations have ever been represented onstage. Poland has won the prize once, for Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida (2014); Romania has never won, its first nomination occurring in 2021 with Alexander Nanau's Collective. Hungary has won the award twice—in 1981, for István Szabó's Mephisto, and in 2015, for László Nemes's Son of Saul.

North Macedonia, Greece & Turkey

The fourth installment of Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.

Milčho Mančhevski's Willow offers a resonant perspective on motherhood in a decades-spanning narrative set in North Macedonia, while Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'Or-winning Winter Sleep lingers in the latent class tensions and family disaffections that collide at a remote hotel in Cappadocia. Flashes of humor and violence populate Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos's masterfully bizarre portrait of a not-quite-normal suburban family who have sheltered their adult children from the outside world.

In the 64 years since the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film has existed, only 28 nations have ever been represented onstage. North Macedonia has been nominated twice, for Milčho Mančhevski's previous film Before the Rain and Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov's Honeyland. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys made the December shortlist in 2008—to date, Turkey has never been nominated. Greece has been nominated five times, most recently for Dogtooth, but has never won the award.

Tunisia, Egypt & Morocco

The fifth installment of Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco.

Leila Bouzid's debut feature As I Open My Eyes traces a young woman's struggle to navigate her family's conservative values and her dreams of pursuing a musical career amidst the surveillant atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Tunisia, while Mohamed Diab's Clash encounters the Arab Spring's aftermath from the vantage point of a police truck as protests erupt across Egypt. In his fourth feature Horses of God, celebrated Moroccan auteur Nabil Ayouch interrogates the origins of violence, examining the social realities that enable the cultivation of vulnerable young men into martyrs.

Israel & Palestine

The sixth installment of Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Israel and Palestine.

A richly complex portrait of shifting alliances in the Middle East, Yuval Adler plumbs the elusive relationship between a young Palestinian informant and an Israeli intelligence officer in Bethlehem, his feature debut. Annemarie Jacir's first film Salt of This Sea traces a young Palestinian-American woman's return to the land of her ancestors; her second film, When I Saw You, follows the journey of a young boy and his mother into a Jordanian refugee camp after having been forced from their home during the Six Day War. Celebrated Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad's Omar is an award-winning love story set in the occupied West Bank; his following film The Idol charts the journey of a young singer from Gaza to the international stage. Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti's Ajami offers a cross-sectional portrait of contemporary Israeli society as several women’s lives collide at a beachside hotel.

Norway, Switzerland, Italy & Australia

The final installment of Filmatique's Foreign Language Oscar Submissions series features films from Norway, Switzerland, Italy and Australia.

The Divine Order dramatizes an unassuming Swiss housewife's transformation into an activist for female suffrage in Europe's oldest democracy, where women were denied the right to vote until 1971. Iram Haq's What Will People Say also foregrounds the female perspective in its exploration of family, duty, and cross-generational assimilation in Europe—here, a Pakistani-Norwegian teenager encounters the fault lines between her family's traditional values and the modern, urban lifestyle she has carved out for herself among classmates and friends. Two films from Australia focalize tragic circumstances through the resilient eyes of children protagonists—Rodd Rathjen's Buoyancy follows a young Cambodian boy who is sold into slavery aboard a Thai fishing vessel, while Kim Mourdant's The Rocket delves into the travails of a rural Laotian community displaced by the construction of a dam. Paolo Virzì's The First Beautiful Thing is a tender portrait of a middle-aged son healing his relationship with his ailing mother; in Gianfranco Rosi's humorous and harrowing documentary Fire at Sea, a small Mediterranean island emerges as the nexus of the refugee crisis.

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Curation by Ursula Grisham
Head Curator, Filmatique

SeriesFebruary 1, 2023