Neon Dominates International Feature Film Oscar Category With Four Nominations
Neon dominated the International Feature Film Oscar nominations on Wednesday with its films It Was Just An Accident, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent and Sirāt making it onto the final list of five titles for France, Norway, Brazil and Spain respectively.
Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza War-themed drama The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is distributed in the U.S. by Willa, rounded out the selection for Tunisia.
The only shortlisted Neon title not to make it into the nominations was Korean entry No Other Choice. Overall, Neon garnered 18 nominations with these films, in a sign of the growing internationalization of the Academy Awards.
It marks the best ever showing in the category for Neon, which previously enjoyed Best International Feature Film success with the Oscar-winner Parasite.
The distributor now faces a fierce internal and external battle with all five nominated titles in with a chance on different fronts.
Sentimental Value marks Norway’s seventh nomination, with director Joachim Trier also delivering the country’s previous splash in the category with The Worst Person in the World in 2022.
The film debuted in Cannes winning the Grand Jury Prize and has been enjoying a buzzy film festival tour and awards season campaign, recently sweeping the board at the European Film Awards. It has picked up another six nominations in other categories including Best Film and Best Director.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident follows in the wake of last year’s French entry Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard, which made it to the nomination stage in the category, picking up 13 nominations in total.
Other recent French nominations include Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables in 2020, while France won an international film Oscar with Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993.
Alongside No Other Choice, further films not making it through from the 15-title International Feature short list, include Belén (Argentina), Sound of Falling (Germany), Homebound (India), The President’s Cake (Iraq), Kokuho (Japan), All That’s Left of You (Jordan), Palestine 36 (Palestine), Late Shift (Switzerland) and Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan).
