Foreign Language Film Category Shortlist

The Foreign Language film category, like many smaller categories, has nine semifinalists announced before the Oscar nominations are announced at the end of this month. It's a question of practicality: not everyone in the Academy can see that many foreign films, so a select volunteer group among them review everything and whittle down the list. Then the Academy at large votes from those nine films and narrows it down to five for the eventual list of nominees.

The problem is, every year, the volunteer group makes some boneheaded decisions and leaves out widely-praised foreign films from the shortlist -- to the point where Foreign Language Nominating Committee Chairman Mark Johnson had to change the rules after last year and hand-select a few people to help make sure there were no glaring omissions.

Did it work? Well, sort of -- while last year, critically acclaimed films like Persepolis and The Edge of Heaven were left out, this year there was only one notable omission: Gomorrah, an Italian-language mob movie that's been getting a ton of good notices lately. (Let the Right One In was also left out, but it wasn't eligible in the first place for some stupid reason or another.) The shortlist:

Austria, “Revanche” (Gotz Spielmann, director)
Canada, “The Necessities of Life” (Benoit Pilon, director)
France, “The Class” (Laurent Cantet, director)
Germany, “The Baader Meinhof Complex” (Uli Edel, director)
Israel, “Waltz with Bashir” (Ari Folman, director)
Japan, “Departures” (Yojiro Takita, director)
Mexico, “Tear This Heart Out” (Roberto Sneider, director)
Sweden, “Everlasting Moments” (Jan Troell, director)
Turkey, “3 Monkeys” (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, director)

At least the wonderful The Class made it...even though it could still get left out of the final five. For more detailed info on this whole bit of Academy politics, check out this article in L.A. Weekly.

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