This is officially not Italy’s year for an Oscar; this year’s submission, Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma did not make the first cut and is not on the shortened list for this year’s foreign language film nominations. Nobody really thought that it would be, but I never completely gave up hope. It’s an excellent movie.
In case you forgot, I’ll review the reasons we shouldn’t care – expertly outlined by mymovies.it in September of last year:
1) How do we make the right choice? Who knows what those nut cases are looking for on any given year anyway and we’ll never know if another film might have done better.
2) We want to choose a film that is exportable but how can we know that? Gomorrah did very well abroad but didn’t even make it to the short list for the Oscars. If someone can tell us what the hell they are looking for, please come forward.
3 ) The rules are always changing anyway and a formula for choosing that worked one year might not work the next. And don’t forget, Italian cinema doesn’t have the support of Miramax anymore that in the 90s produced 3 Oscars for La vita è bella.
4 ) There are more than 60 candidates for one prize – the odds are against us.
5 ) Who really cares anyway about the debatable opinion of a group that is going to make a pretty random choice anyway. Better to worry about ourselves and how well our movies do abroad than worry about this silly Oscar.
So in your face Academy Awards – you aren’t the boss of us!
The nine still being considered for Best Foreign Language Film are:
Belgium’s “Bullhead,” Michael R. Roskam, director
Canada’s “Monsieur Lazhar,” Philippe Falardeau, director
Denmark’s “Superclásico,” Ole Christian Madsen, director;\
Germany’s “Pina,” Wim Wenders, director
Iran’s “A Separation,” Asghar Farhadi, director
Israel’s “Footnote,” Joseph Cedar, director
Morocco’s “Omar Killed Me,” Roschdy Zem, director
Poland’s “In Darkness,” Agnieszka Holland, director and
Taiwan’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” Wei Te-sheng, director
I Love Italian Everything 