Filmatique presents Foreign Language Oscar Submissions, a collection of films that provides a countervailing vision of world cinema––one more vibrant and diverse than the Academy might have us think––and seeks to present a more diverse and expansive vision of international cinema by celebrating films from underrepresented nations.
In the 63 years since the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film has existed, only 26 nations have ever been represented onstage.
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Yaron Shani & Scandar Copti • Israel • 2009
Ajami is a bustling multi-ethnic neighborhood in Yaffa, a place where Palestinian immigrants, Israeli Arabs, Christians and Jews live alongside each other. They share the same streets, the same sorrows. Omar has been targeted in reveng...
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Leyla Bouzid • 2015 • Tunisia
Farah struggles to pursue her singing career during a revolution.
While her parents have traditional aspirations for her, Farah is spending her summer performing in a political rock band, while carrying out a clandestine affair with one of her bandma...
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Christian Petzold • 2012 • Germany
Steeped in the life in former GDR, a woman is torn between two worlds.
Barbara Wolff arrives in a small town in East Germany, having been transferred from Berlin's prestigious Charité hospital following an unspecified transgression. Consigned to...
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Yuval Adler • Israel • 2013 • A complexly human portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanfur is seventeen years old, the younger brother of Ibrahim, a prominent Palestinian militia leader. Living with his domineering father and taciturn mother, it is clear that Sanfur's l...
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Rodd Rathjen • Australia • 2019
Fourteen year old Chakra lives in Cambodia with his family, where he labors each day in the rice fields his older brother stands to inherit. Yearning for freedom, Chakra secretly works with a local broker to make the passage to Thailand, where he ...
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Cãlin Peter Netzer • Romania • 2013
Cornelia has earned a living. A successful architect in Bucharest, she is also estranged from her son Barbu, a state of affairs she ascribes to Barbu's girlfriend. Despite all the luxuries her success has afforded him, Barbu seemingly wants no...
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Chaitanya Tamhane • 2014 • India
A folk singer must navigate contemporary India's labyrinthine legal system.
By day, Narayan Kamble teaches young children poetry at a local school; in the evenings he performs folk songs at political protests, lamenting the lack of social mobility...
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Yorgos Lanthimos • Greece • 2005 • An astonishing portrait of one of cinema's strangest families.
A handsome, well-manicured estate in the Greek countryside. A wealthy businessman lives here with his wife and three grown children, all in their twenties. They are ostensibly an or...
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Afia Nathaniel • Pakistan • 2014 • A thrilling journey focalizing the social issue of child brides.
Allah Rakhi lives in the Hunza Valley with her husband, a local tribal leader, and their ten-year-old daughter Zainab. Violence has plagued their community for some time, due to a ...
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Gianfranco Rosi • 2016 • Italy
A small fishing town emerges as the nexus of the refugee crisis.
Halfway between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia lies a tiny island with a dwindling full-time population of several thousand. As the island denizens go about their business, distress...
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Pen-Ek Ratanaruang • Thailand-France • 2011
Tul used to be a good man. Before he was blackmailed by a powerful politician, Tul was earnest and scrupulous; now he’s just a corrupt cop hell-bent on revenge. Soon he is recruited as a hitman, leading to an accident in which his visi...
Nabil Ayouch • 2012 • Morocco
Based on the 2003 Casablanca bombings, Nabil Ayouch's fourth film was selected as Morocco's official submission to the 86th Academy Awards.
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Jayro Bustamate • 2015 • Guatemala-France • A Mayan girl lives at the foot of an active volcano
Immersing the spectator in the rhythms of a vanishing world amidst ever-present threats of geological rupture and encroaching modernity, Ixcanul navigates the precariousness of female i...
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Attila Hun • 2017 • Hungary • A sleeper hit comedy performed by differently-abled actors.
Two residents in an assisted-living facility outside of Budapest find themselves recruited as accomplices for a Serbian crime lord.
A sleeper hit at the Hungarian box office, and performed ...
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Małgorzata Szumowska & Michał Englert • Poland • 2020
Zhenia arrives from the East with barely a suitcase, a folding massage bed draped over his shoulder. Navigating a series of highway underpasses to the Polish immigration office, he declares his intention to stay. Zhenia may o...
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Annemarie Jacir • Palestine • 2008 • A portrait of a woman's determination to reclaim her birthright.
Sixty years after her grandparents' exile from Jaffa, Soraya feels something is not right. Departing Brooklyn for a homeland she has never known, she is greeted instead with susp...
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Ursula Meier • 2012 • Switzerland • A ski resort drama with a powerful performance by Léa Seydoux.
At the very edge of adolescence, Simon lives with his sister Louise in a Swiss valley beneath a large mountain range. Each day he makes the commute to a luxury ski resort at altitud...
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Byambasuren Davaa • Mongolia-Germany • 2005
Nansal is the eldest daughter of a nomadic family. One the way home from school one day, she happens upon a black and white puppy, naming him Zochor (Spot). Her father immediately refuses to allow the dog to stay, however, fearing that i...
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Cristi Puiu • 2015 • Romania • An old man is shuttled across Bucharest from one clinic to another.
Dante Remus Lazarescu is feeling dreadfully ill. In the search for medical attention, his lone ally is Mioara, a Virgil-like paramedic ushering him toward certain twilight.
Bone-d...
Petra Volpe • 2017 • Switzerland
Nora becomes the face of the local suffragette movement.
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Paolo Virzì • Italy • 2010 • A gentle comedy of life, love, and family.
Bruno, a middle-aged teacher, is stoned out of his mind on a park bench. He’s forgotten his own birthday, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Sandra, who organized the party. Before he can say no, Bruno’s...
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Hany Abu-Assad • Palestine • 2016 • A teen smuggles himself across borders to audition for Arab Idol
Gaza, 2005. Despite the despair of their suroundings, ten-year-old Mohammed and his sister, Nour, spend their days immersed in childhood games and music, playing in a band with tw...
