Submissions are slowly being made from around for the Best Foreign Film Oscar race. The Academy will eventually whittle down the numerous entries into the final five that will vie for Oscar but Denmark and Canada have two early favorites.
Susanne Bier’s “Haevnen”/”Vengeance” (which will also be known in some markets as “In A Better World”) has been selected by Denmark as their Oscar entry, beating out a shortlist of films that included Thomas Vinterberg’s “Submarino” and Thomas Lindholm and Michael Noer’s “R.” Written by frequent collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen and starring Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Mark Rygaard, William Jøhnk Nielsen, the film concerns two families and a friendship that will become tested (sorry, anything deeper than that has been difficult to find).
The film has been a hit in its native land where it opened on August 26th, and recently played TIFF (we unfortunately missed it).
Meanwhile, north of the border, Canada has chosen Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” as their Oscar horse. The film, which played to strong reviews at TIFF, stars Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Remy Girard in a story that concerns a set of “twins that journey to the Middle East to unearth their family tree.”
Both films have been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics and will hit theaters in 2011.