To suggest that France had an abundance of quality candidates for its International Film Oscar submission this year is beyond an understatement. The top three candidates included Céline Sciamma‘s Berlin premiere “Petite Maman,” which has a stellar 93 on Metacritic, Audrey Diwan’s Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner “Happening,” and this year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, Julia Ducournau’s “Titane.” The selection? In something of a surprise, “Titane.”
France’s selection committee included Julie Delphy, Oscar-winning screenwriter Florian Zeller (“The Father”), Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux and producer Alain Goldeman (“La Vie en Rose”), among others. “Titane” was thought to have the longest odds despite its Cannes pedigre. Ducournau’s dramatic thriller has had some polarizing reactions and had the worst overall reviews so far among the top three contenders (73 on Metacritic). That being said, it did win the Palme with a nine member Cannes jury featuring seven AMPAS members: Spike Lee, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Song Kang-ho, Jessica Hausner, Mati Diop, Melaine Laurent and Tahar Rahim. That’s may have been a huge selling point as well as the fact that “Titane’s” U.S. distributor, NEON Films, guided another Palme winner, “Parasite,” to Oscar glory less than two years ago.
For Sciamma, this becomes her second film snubbed for International Film consideration after “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” was passed over for Lady Ly’s “Les Miserables” in 2019.
With this year’s International Film submission deadline pushed back a month later than usual to November 1st, the entire field is still in flux. That being said, Japan has selected Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Cannes screenplay winner “Drive My Car,” Germany picked Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” Spain snubbed Pedro Almodovar picking Fernando León de Aranoa’s “The Good Boss,” Kosovo selected Blerta Basholli’s Sundance Film Festival winner “Hive,” Sebastian Meise’s “Great Freedom” is Austria’s submission, Finland picked Juho Kuosmanen‘s Cannes crowd pleaser “Compartment No. 6,” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” is Columbia’s submission.
It is expeted that Joachim Trier’s “Worst Person in the World” will represtent Norway, Jonas Poher Rasmussen‘s “Flee” will be submitted for Denmark and Itally will pick Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” but considering some of the snubs so far, anything can happen.
Once again, Academy members who volunteer to be part of the first phase of Interational Film voting will be given a random set of films to watch and judge. They can also grade additional films submitted outside their individual set. Those votes will be tabulated for a 15 film shortlist that will be revealed with all the other shortlists on Dec. 15. The final five will be part of the Oscar nominations set for Feb. 8, 2022.