In addition to all the major Hollywood films and American indies I saw at TIFF, I also saw several international films from some of the world’s most celebrated auteurs. In some cases, we already know a few of these films won’t be competing for the Best International Film Oscar. France somewhat surprisingly submitted The Taste of Things over the Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall, and Japan opted for the Wim Wenders films Perfect Days over Evil Does Not Exist, which is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to the Oscar-winning Drive My Car.
But I did manage to catch several films that have not only been officially submitted to the Oscars by their countries (or at least are expected to be in the very near future), but also have good chances to be nominated. Or, in some cases, may even win the Oscar. Let’s take a look at six of them, starting with the one I think is least likely to make the Oscar Shortlist, and ending with what I currently think is the frontrunner for the award.
Film: Fallen Leaves
Oscar Submission Status: Has been submitted by Finland
Odds of Making Short List: So so
Odds of Getting Nomination: Pretty unlikely
Odds of Winning: Not happening
This is the fifth time a film by Aki Kaurismaki has been the official Finnish submission to the Academy Awards, but only one of those previous four submissions has yielded a nomination—2002’s The Man Without a Past—and none of the others even made the shortlist. I love the dry wit and stoic deadpan of Aki’s films, and 2011’s Le Havre is a personal favorite, but his extremely unique style doesn’t have much history of charming Academy voters.
Fallen Leaves is a sweet little love story about two downtrodden people, both of whom lose their dead end jobs at the beginning of the film. It has a great dog, and it’s a brisk, 81-minute burst of hope amid what is usually a pretty dour crop of films. Plus it won the Cannes Jury Prize (essentially the festival’s third-place distinction), so it clearly manages to affect some viewers. But for a filmmaker who already trades in emotional minimalism, Fallen Leaves may be too spare even for some Aki devotees.
Film: Green Border
Oscar Submission Status: Somewhat likely submission of Poland
Odds of Making Short List: Fairly good
Odds of Getting Nomination: So so
Odds of Winning: Pretty unlikely
The great Agnieszka Holland won the Special Jury Prize at Venice for this immensely powerful story of the current refugee crisis happening on the border between Poland and Belarus. Of the 40+ films I saw at TIFF, Green Border honestly might be the most emotionally bleak (and that even includes the Auschwitz film further down this list). It presents a gut-wrenching problem of dehumanization happening right now, every day, on a large scale, and concludes with seemingly no solutions. You have to admire the 74-year-old Holland for tackling an issue that has made her the target of political ire in her own country, and Green Border is about as uncompromising as it gets.
Three of Holland’s previous films were nominated for Oscars between 1985 and 2011, so she clearly has her fans among older Academy members. And Green Border is not just a searing look at a hot-button issue of global politics, but it’s also impeccably crafted, and the evocative black and white imagery of the muddy Polish forests stays with you. The biggest obstacle to Green Border making the Oscar shortlist is probably whether Poland does the right thing and submits it, considering it doesn’t exactly paint the country’s current geo-political policies in a flattering light. But if this gets submitted and makes the Short List, it could be a serious contender for a nomination.
Film: The Monk and the Gun
Oscar Submission Status: Has been submitted by Bhutan
Odds of Making Short List: Very good
Odds of Getting Nomination: So so
Odds of Winning: Pretty unlikely
Pawl Choyning Dorji’s first film, the heartwarming Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, rode a great title all the way to a surprise nomination for Best International Film two years ago. But if The Monk and the Gun repeats that feat, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; the movie is just that good.
Taking place on the eve of Bhutan’s 2006 transition from monarchy to democracy, The Monk and the Gun is a funny, breezy, and ultimately moving look at a traditional people’s uncertain move to modernity, and there’s an almost PTA-like way that unrelated stories and characters collide and bounce off of each other in ways both amusing and deeply affecting. There are sadly no yaks (in the title, in the classroom, or in the film), and that could make all the difference in a deeply competitive year for the Best International Film race. But The Monk and the Gun should cruise through to the Short List, and from there, anything can happen.
Film: The Teachers’ Lounge
Oscar Submission Status: Has been submitted by Germany
Odds of Making Short List: Excellent
Odds of Getting Nomination: Very good
Odds of Winning: Decent
It’s a great example of how small stakes can somehow take on Shakespearean proportions: when a teacher accuses a colleague of stealing, she finds herself facing the wrath of that colleague’s child (who happens to be in her class). Leonie Benesch gives a gripping performance as Carla, the well-meaning teacher who becomes the embodiment of how no good deed goes unpunished. The film’s execution—dialogue, staging, editing, performances—is stunning, and every scene makes perfect sense on a character level, even as things continue to spiral out of control.
Even if it doesn’t ultimately get an Oscar nomination, The Teachers’ Lounge has had a hell of a year. It already swept the German Film Awards (their Oscar equivalent), winning the awards for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing, and it was also picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics, who have a great track record of turning small foreign dramas into box office hits. It may not have been a splashy Cannes or Venice premiere (like the rest of the films on this list), and it somehow wasn’t even selected for the main competition in Berlin, where it premiered in a sidebar. But make no mistake, The Teachers’ Lounge is a serious Oscar contender.
Film: The Zone of Interest
Oscar Submission Status: Has been submitted by the United Kingdom
Odds of Making Short List: Excellent
Odds of Getting Nomination: Very good
Odds of Winning: Decent
It’s hard to predict how Academy voters will react to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which is so difficult and discomforting that it makes Under the Skin, his 2014 film starring Scarlett Johansson as a seductive alien body snatcher, look like boilerplate sci-fi. The Zone of Interest is a brilliant and powerful piece of art, and I fully expect it will top many critics’ lists at the end of the year. But it’s the personification of “the banality of evil,” and one of the most deeply unsettling films I’ve ever seen.
There is no real plot to speak of. It simply follows Rudolf Höss, the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz, and his family through their normal days, in their normal house on the other side of the camp’s fortified exterior walls. We see Hoss swim in the river with his children, his wife shows off their lush garden, and she asks her husband to take her back to the spa they once visited. And all the while, the sounds of genocide occasionally drift over the walls, forever off screen but just as forever at the forefront of our minds.
How will Academy members react to such a film? Almost nothing would surprise me. This could easily win the Oscar and it could just as easily fail to secure a nomination. There’s an excellent chance The Zone of Interest will be historically recognized as 2023’s most important film. Whether or not Academy voters possess the wherewithal to recognize that in the moment is another matter entirely.
Film: The Promised Land
Oscar Submission Status: Presumptive submission of Denmark
Odds of Making Short List: Excellent
Odds of Getting Nomination: Very high
Odds of Winning: Highly possible
Out of nearly 50 films watched at TIFF, my three favorites were Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, and this Danish gem by Nikolaj Arcel (who previously earned a nomination for Best International Film for 2012’s A Royal Affair, which also happened to be the film that launched the career of Alicia Vikander). Mads Mikkelsen stars as Ludwig Kahlen, a Danish soldier tasked by the crown to cultivate the believed-to-be-unfarmable Jutland peninsula of Denmark. That may not sound very rousing, but the plot kicks into gear when Kahlen runs afoul of a King Joffrey-like local lord, De Schinkel, who quickly becomes one of the most singularly despicable villains in recent film history.
The Promised Land is a visually lush historical epic made in a classical Hollywood style, but with a distinctly modern understanding of race and gender dynamics that propel the film into deeply emotional (and deliciously satisfying) territory. At times it reminded me of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, and the 1995 Liam Neeson adventure epic, Rob Roy. I loved everything about it, and it should galvanize the “steak eater” contingent of the Academy (voters who love classic-style crowd pleasers about Great Men doing Great Things) in a way that films in the arthouse-heavy Best International Film race rarely do. I think The Promised Land is our Oscar frontrunner.