Foreign Language Films

This year a total number of 67 films were submitted for Oscar nomination in the foreign film category. All the films really showcased an array of robust talents working around the globe. The truth is that the films that are selected in this category hardly show anything that says something good about their native lands. Rather the films focus on dark episodes in their country’s past or stewing social problems of today.

Based on last year’s winning movie, “The Lives of Others”, the countries who have send their films for a nomination have chosen movies such as Brazil’s “Last Stop 174″, which is the agonizing story of children growing up on the streets of Rio, and Italy’s “Gomorrah”, which is a grimy portrait of a collapsing city invaded by organized crime.

Similarly  Uli Edel’s “The Baader Meinhof Complex”, a film from Germany is “the biggest tragedy we had after the Second World War”. Edel has returned to his native country, after working in US for over 2 decades, to tell the story of the Red Army Faction, who were the infamous group of 1960s radicals. They rose from bombing buildings to slaughtering innocents in the name of agitating anti-imperialist revolution.

To make “Waltz With Bashir”, an animated documentary, Ari Folman had to wait for nearly 4 years. The film accounts massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese militiamen under the watchful eyes of the Israeli army. “Sabra and Shatila is really a very big turning point in the history of Israel. It’s the first time that Israel went into a war that was not defensive. This was planned war. That was really the breakup of the leadership, and it was never fixed again”, said the director himself.

“The Class” by Laurent Cantet although takes a more contemporary tack but it deals with the harrowing story of the society. Based on the students’ life of an inner-city high school, the movie serves as an example of French society, with racial and cultural tensions encompassing the classroom walls. A playful debate over soccer teams becomes battle about national identity, and a young Chinese student utters aversion for his classmates’ “shameless” behavior.

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