FLOS: Foreign Language Oscar® Submissions

Step into the Oscar® season with this selection of Foreign-Language contenders.


Eyes on the Prize: Foreign Language Oscar® Directors in Discussion

It’s another notable year for the Academy’s Best Film in a Foreign Language category: 87 countries put forward a film in the hopes of taking home that coveted golden statue. In December that impressive number will narrow to nine, with the final five nominees announced on January 22. Of those 87 national selections, 43 are on... Read More

Running Time: 90


The Angel

Alluring, angelic and amoral, baby-faced robber Carlos Robledo Puch, aka Blondie, quickly moves from breaking and entering to murder alongside handsome career criminal Ramón, soon becoming Argentina’s most wanted, feared and infamous outlaw. Read More

Running Time: 118


Ayka

Set among the unforgiving, snow-covered back alleys and streets of Moscow, an impoverished Kyrgyz woman fights for her own survival after abandoning her newborn in this harrowing, raw depiction of a determined immigrant’s plight. Read More

Running Time: 100


Birds of Passage

What was meant to be a one-time marijuana deal by a member of Colombia’s Wayuu tribe soon becomes a major drug trafficking operation. It transforms the group and sets in motion the disintegration of a rich culture in this gripping, epic crime film. Read More

Running Time: 125


Buck Run

Set in rural Pennsylvania, Nick Frangione’s affecting drama gives us 15-year-old Shaw (Nolan Lyons, Boardwalk Empire), a bullied outsider trying to cope with his mother’s death and a reunion with his estranged, alcoholic father (James Le Gros). Read More

Running Time: 80


Buffalo Boys

This raucous anti-colonialist fantasy reminiscent of Django Unchained is the first Indonesian Western. Following a brutal massacre and murder of Sultan Hamza, his two young sons are taken to America to learn the ways of the West in preparation for revenge in a surprising showdown. Read More

Running Time: 103


Cake

This modern, authentic movie about sibling relationships and the demands of aging parents stimulates conversation and stands as an example of the resurgence of new Pakistani cinema. Read More

Running Time: 125


Capernaum

An emotionally charged tour de force, Nadine Labaki’s film chronicles a Lebanese boy’s harrowing odyssey, with a refugee baby in tow, through the country’s slums before he sues his own parents for giving him life in such a depraved world. Read More

Running Time: 120


Champions

A hilarious and heartfelt spin on the classic underdog tale — with central roles performed by intellectually disabled actors — writer/director Javier Fesser’s film is not only Spain’s newest box office smash, but a rollicking and unforgettable reminder that none of us is truly “normal.” Read More

Running Time: 124


Cold War

It’s been five years since the Academy Award®-winning Ida, but Pawel Pawlikowski’s achingly beautiful portrait of l’amour fou proves well worth the wait. Unfolding against the backdrop of the Cold War years in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, the film renders believable a complicated and disruptive love in impossible... Read More

Running Time: 88


Dogman

Italian maestro Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, PSIFF 2009) returns with a visually astounding and biting morality tale centered on Marcello, a meek dog groomer and small-time drug dealer, and his toxic relationship with a barbaric gangster who terrorizes his desolate coastal town. Read More

Running Time: 102


Donbass

Told through a series of vignettes, this macabre, social-realist portmanteau about the civil war in eastern Ukraine evokes the social breakdown in the Donbass region. Read More

Running Time: 110


Eldorado

Asking deeply relevant questions about humanity and social responsibility, Markus Imhoof draws on his personal experience to show a global phenomenon — the struggle of thousands of refugees fleeing from Africa to Europe, and what happens when they reach their Eldorado. Read More

Running Time: 91


Euthanizer

Writer/director Teemu Nikki describes his darkly comic drama about a man merciful to animals but ruthless to humans as “Dirty Harry with pets.” Cranky loner Veijo puts animals out of their misery and delivers justice to careless owners who neglect their pets. Read More

Running Time: 85


Family First

The fragile thread holding together two brothers and their recovering alcoholic mother becomes strained to the point of crisis when the elder brother attempts to break away from the family’s criminal activities. Read More

Running Time: 87


Girl

Fifteen-year-old Lara has a lot on her plate. Not only is she starting a new school in a new city and training to become a professional ballerina, she’s realizing she was born a boy. Read More

Running Time: 109


The Guilty

In the year’s most heart-pounding 85 minutes in cinema, a sidelined Danish police officer desperately attempts to thwart an alleged kidnapping, and worse, all from the confines of his frustratingly limited emergency call center desk in this ingenious, nail-biting thriller. Read More

Running Time: 85


The Heiresses

As part of Paraguay’s fading aristocracy and in dire financial straits, introvert Chela finds work as an ad hoc chauffeur. This leads to an encounter with earthy, sensual Angy — and an unexpected late-in-life revelation — in this sly and funny debut feature from writer/director Marcelo Martinessi. Read More

Running Time: 97


Hidden Man​

Jiang Wen’s stylish, ribald revenge thriller, set in 1930s Beijing, has Chinese-born, American-raised Li (Eddie Peng) return to the capital as an American spy bent on avenging the murder of his childhood kung-fu master. Multiple plot twists and luminous production design make this great fun indeed. Read More

Running Time: 134


I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians

Intent on forcing contemporary society to confront the realities of the past, a young artist prepares an elaborate public performance detailing ethnic cleansing carried out by the Romanian military on the Eastern Front in 1941. But when the curtain rises, will the audience’s reaction be what she intended? Read More

Running Time: 140



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2019 Film Festival