Editor’s note: This is part of a 32-part series dissecting the 85th Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read the other posts regarding this event, please click here. Thank you, and enjoy!
By Branden from Flixploitation
Hello, everyone. This is Branden from Flixploitation. I am here to discuss the films that have been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film this year. This year’s list included three historical dramas, a story about undying love and a girl struggling to survive in a civil war. Here are the nominees:
Amour – Austria
Director: Michael Haneke
Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Amour is the most honored film in this category. It has been nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. It tells the harrowing story of Anne (Best Actress nominee Emmauelle Riva) and her husband Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a pair of retired music teachers who have to deal with Anne’s rapidly declining health. Being in her eighties, complications arise that leaves Anne clinging to life. What will Georges do when the person that you love is suffering? He has to made a life-altering decision for the sake for himself and his beloved Anne.
Rebelle (War Witch) – Canada
Director: Kim Nguyen
Writer/director Kim Nguyen’s War Witch recounts the story of Komona (played by Rachel Mwanza), a teenager living in the Congo is pregnant with her first child. She recounts her tumultuous life to her unborn child, like she was kidnapped and forced into being a child soldier for the rebels in the civil war. There is something unique within Komona that makes her essential to the rebel effort. She can foresee the enemy’s presence. Komona is proclaimed a witch and revered in her group. Her gift comes at a price where she is haunted by the spirits of the dead.
No – Chile
Director: Pablo Larraín
Based on the play “El Plebiscito” by Antonio Skármeta, director Pablo Larraín recounts the story of Chile being under the oppresive dictiorship of Augusto Pinochet during the late 1980s. The leader wanted to change the laws before the election so he could stay in power indefinitely. Members of the opposition employs an advesting executive, René Saavedra (played by Gael García Bernal) to head up a campaign to find a way to overthrow the merciless dictator. With limited resources, Saavedra comes up with bold plan to topple a regime.
En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair) – Denmark
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Based on real events, A Royal Affair takes place in 18th century, Denmark. A young English princess named Caroline Mathilde (played by Alicia Vikander) is set to be married to Christian VII (played by Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). Nobody knows is that the new king is stark raving mad. He does not love his young queen. Situations become complicated when a physician named Johann Friedrich Struensee (played by Mads Mikkelsen) comes into their lives. While Struensee finds a way to fix the king’s mind, he beds his queen that causes an uproar and divides a nation.
Kon-Tiki – Norway
Directors: Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg
This fictionalized version of the Oscar winning documentary of the same name from 1950 recounts the story of documentarian Thor Heyerdahl (played by Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen), and his 4,300 mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1947, Heyerdahl and his crew set sail on a balsa wood raft named Kon-Tiki from South America to the Polynesian Islands. He wanted to prove his theory that South America might have possibly settled into the Polynesia during pre-Columbia times. Many anthropologists believed that it was fabrication. This movie recounts the101 day journey that changes their lives forever.
Tags: Best Foreign Language Film, flixpoitation, LAMB Devours The Oscars