The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlist for the 2019 Foreign Language Film Oscar today and, as expected, Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” and Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” easily made the list. The Netflix and Amazon Studios releases join seven other films that will be screened next month and pared down to the five nominees announced along with all the Oscar nods on Tuesday, Jan. 22.
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Six of the nine films were determined by voters in Los Angeles and overseas who were required to watch at least eleven of this year’s submissions. The other three films were selected or “saved” by the Foreign Language Film committee.
This year’s nine finalists are as follows:
The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:
Colombia, “Birds of Passage”
Denmark, “The Guilty”
Germany, “Never Look Away”
Japan, “Shoplifters”
Kazakhstan, “Ayka”
Lebanon, “Capernaum”
Mexico, “Roma”
Poland, “Cold War”
South Korea, “Burning”
The biggest minor upset seems to be “Border,” the Swedish troll fairy tale directed by Ali Abbasi and premiered at Cannes earlier this year.Academy members are now eligible to participate in the nominations round of voting in New York, London, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Each city will screen the nine shortlisted films in theaters over a three-day period from Friday, January 11 through Sunday, January 13. Three films will screen each day. Additionally, international members (who live outside of the U.K.) will be invited to opt-in to stream the nine shortlisted films on the Academy’s member site. Members must see all nine films before casting their ballots.
The 91st Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 22.
The 91st Academy Awards will be revealed on Sunday, Feb. 24 on ABC beginning at 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET.