The Academy has narrowed down the 76 submissions in the Foreign Language film category to just 9, from which the five nominees will be selected:
- The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
- An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
- The Hunt (Denmark)
- Two Lives (Germany)
- The Grandmaster (Hong Kong)
- The Notebook (Hungary)
- The Great Beauty (Italy)
- Omar (Palestine)
Some surprising snubs here, including Asghar Farhadi's The Past, and Wadjda, from Saudi Arabia. Most thought those films were locks to be nominated, and with the year's biggest foreign film, Blue is the Warmest Color, ineligible for submission because of its release date in France (bet France is kicking themselves for that), this is a pretty open category. My guess is the five will be The Hunt, The Great Beauty, The Grandmaster, The Missing Picture and Omar. But that's kind of a stab in the dark- I'm only confident about The Hunt and The Great Beauty, which I think are the only real contenders for the win.
Trailer for Italy's The Great Beauty, which is getting a lot of attention lately from various European awards:
