Italy and Denmark announced The Hand of God and Flee as their entries for the upcoming Academy Awards on Tuesday. Russia’s Unclenching The Fists and Norway’s The Worst Person in The World will also run for the Oscar in the International Feature Film category.
The 94th Oscars are scheduled to take place on March 27 in the year 2022 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Denmark’s Another Round, featuring Mads Mikkelsen is the running winner. Flee is an animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, and is based on a real-life incident based on Rasmussen’s friend Amin life. Amin arrived in Denmark as a young refugee from Afghanistan 25 years ago according to the Danish Film Institute. This helped in the film becoming a part of the shortlist.
Claus Ladegaard, CEO of the Danish Film Institute who chairs the committee said, “Flee is the haunting and inventive story of a refugee and his journey. About the enormous price that people in his position pay every day, even in a safe haven. Jonas Poher Rasmussen directs with tremendous empathy, and Amin’s story is hard to shake. The film’s finely balanced use of animation, music and live action gives us a real sense of the horror and cynicism of Amin’s journey to Europe – while not ignoring the beauty, humour and hope of his story. This makes ‘Flee’ an unusually nuanced film with social and existential depth.”
Flee had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it won in the World Cinema Documentary Competition category, and was among the Official Selection titles at the Cannes Festival’s digital edition in 2020. It also won the top prize at the Animation In Film Awards.
Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize Silver Lion. Its lead actor Filippo Scotti caught the eye of the audience and won the Mastroianni award for the best debut. This film was announced as Italy’s contender by an 11-member committee comprising Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera among others.
Sorrentino who won an Oscar for his 2013 film The Great Beauty, made The Hand of God with Netflix attached to distribute.
The film is said to tell the story of a young boy in Naples during the 1980s. Largely autobiographical, it spans several years from Maradona’s arrival in the city to play for Napoli and his team’s first Italian title. During this time the boy comes of age and witnesses his parents’ death, according to Screen Daily.
The Norwegian film, The Worst Person in the World, a modern comedy-drama and the third film in director Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy, “chronicles four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.”
The first two parts which released earlier are Reprise, and Oslo, 31 August.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and saw its lead actor Renate Reinsve become the first ever Norwegian female actor to win the Best Actress award.
Kira Kovalenko’s film, Unclenching The Fist that won in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival is Russia’s contender for the Oscars.
“In a former mining town in North Ossetia, a young woman struggles to escape the stifling hold of the family she loves as much as she rejects,” according to IMDb.
Apart from the aforementioned, South Korea, and Spain announced Escape from Mogadishu and The Good Boss as their respective Oscar entries. Others include Hungary’s Post Mortem, Germany’s I’m Your Man, Somalia’s The Grave digger’s Wife, Canada’s Drunken Birds, Switzerland’s Olga, Kyrgyzstan’s Shambala, Ireland’s Shelter, Cambodia’s White Building, Bangladesh’s Rehana and Poland’s Leave No Traces.
Julia Ducournau’s Titane, that won the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, is France’s official entry.
Recommended
The 2022 edition will see Bosnia and Herzegovina return with The White Fortress, Tunisia with Golden Butterfly, Romania with Bad Luck Banging Or Looney Porn, and Hong Kong with Zero to Hero.
India announced the Tamil film Koozhangal (Pebbles) to be its official entry.
The deadline for submissions to the Academy is November 1, 2021. A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to be announced on December 21, with the final five nominees revealed on February 8, 2022. So far, over 60 countries have entered for the category, according to a compiled list by Deadline.