This year’s slate of best international film Oscar nominees puts France, Brazil, Germany, Latvia and Denmark center stage for the upcoming Academy Awards. And with several of these films dealing with deep-rooted issues in their country from past to present, ranging from stories about censorship, military takeovers to ultimate redemption and hope in the face of senseless violence, there’s a lot connecting these selections despite their widely differing styles. And in the case of one animated film, an entirely different medium.
“Emilia Pérez,” which led the overall nomination tally with 13, including best picture and best director, has the most cross-genre appeal, with the film bringing together the movie musical and crime thriller. Director Jacques Audiard previously told Variety that “it’s a film that’s ‘political,’ I know it. [It’s] as much about trans identity as about the disappeared in Mexico.”
With its searing black-and-white cinematography, Denmark’s “The Girl with the Needle,” set in post-WWI Copenhagen, stands out as a particularly dark and disturbing film in the Oscar lineup with its inspiration taken from the Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who died in 1929. Director Magnus von Horn found himself surprised by the Academy recognition, as well as the film’s box office success back in Denmark.
“It’s not a film you expect to have such reach, especially … because small children are being subjected to bad things in it,” von Horn says. “It was a difficult film to get made and financed. So when we saw that it got nominated by the Oscars and had found a home with cinemagoers, it just proves that maybe there is no real recipe for what works in cinema. It’s just good storytelling.”
With the increasing diversity and international appeal of the Academy’s voting body, von Horn, like other directors whose film travel the world, tuned into his film’s universal appeal across language barriers. Since the Cannes premiere of “The Girl With the Needle” — the same festival that launched “Flow,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and “Emilia Pérez” — von Horn has noticed different takeaways from the campaign trail.
“In South Korea, for example, we spoke about national traumas of illegal adoptions for kids who were stolen in the ’70s and ’80s and adopted by families in Sweden and Denmark,” von Horn explains. “Often what it connects to is the story of unwanted people and unwanted children and what we as a society do with them. I think that’s timeless.”
Von Horn also recognizes how the film has resonated for its exploration of horrors for women as the young factory worker, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), struggles to find a legal and safe way to have an abortion. “I live in Poland, which has some of the most restrictive abortion laws, where freedom of choice was removed in 2020. It’s very fresh as it is in the United States.”
The political resonance of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” especially rings true as its director, Mohammad Rasoulof, had to make the movie in secret and was subsequently sentenced to imprisonment and flogging shortly before its premiere in Cannes last year — he managed to flee the country. The film is highly critical of Iranian censorship, incorporating social media footage from protests around the country.
“The Seed of the Scared Fig”
Courtesy of Neon
“The nomination was interesting, not just because it represents professional success but because this film went through a lot of struggles to get made,” Rasoulof says. “[During filming], we never even thought about the Oscars even for a moment. We actually didn’t even think we could finish the film.”
With “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” exploring a politically volatile moment in Iran’s history, Rasoulof also sees the larger impact with events that have shocked people around the world.
“This [nomination] was like a gun shooting at censorship,” Rasoulof says. “This film came out of the independent cinema of Iran and entered a very different course than what it was expected to enter. But also the fact that it was nominated by Germany was important because we’re not confined within political borders.”
Like “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” best picture nominee “I’m Still Here” grounds a larger political story about a terrifying historical moment through the perspective of one family’s journey — in this case, during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s.
“It’s about the light of a family at the beginning of the film and how that light is drained once an enormous injustice is committed,” director Walter Salles says. “But it’s also about how one can overcome loss. It tells so much about not only that family but the country as a whole. I’ve always tried to do films in which the journey of the characters somehow intermingles with the journey of a country.”
While Denmark, France, Brazil and Germany have all landed multiple nominations in this category before, Lativia sees its first, with “Flow.” It also stands out from the other nominees because it’s a dialogue-free animated film set in a fictional world where a group of animals are forced to band together after a natural disaster. It’s only the third animated film to ever be nominated in the category, joining a “Waltz With Bashir” and “Flee” in that exclusive club.
“Our film was kind of hard to compare with anything. I wanted to make a film that both works as this adventure film with funny animals, so that would appeal to kids although I wasn’t really thinking about that when pitching it,” director Gints Zilbalodis admits. “But there’s also the philosophical aspect about these themes that are very relevant with the flood, which could be seen as a real flood.”
“Flow”
Janus Films and Sideshow
Zilbalodis hasn’t been surprised by people thematically reading into his film as a warning for the future of climate change with no human beings featured in the world.
“That comes back to not disrespecting kids and instead showing them that the world is complicated,” Zilbalodis elaborates. “Often in kids’ films, you end the film and everything’s perfect and the friends and heroes win. We wanted to have a sense of closure but we didn’t want people to come out of the film feeling like everything’s perfect.”
Salles wasn’t shy about seeing the increased relevance of his film following the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president last year. In his native Brazil, there was even an attempted coup in 2022.
“The film resonates with current events in Brazil, but unfortunately not only in Brazil. We are living in a moment of utmost fragility of democracy in different parts of the world and I think this is in great part responsible for audience members saying, ‘Well, it’s not a film about the past. It’s a film about who we are now,’” Salles says.
