FLOS: Foreign Language Oscar® Submissions
Step into the Oscar® season with this selection of Foreign-Language contenders.
The Interpreter
Vacillating between comedy and tragedy, this poignant road movie follows a 70-year-old Austrian, the estranged son of a vicious Nazi commander, exploring Slovakia with an 80-year-old translator, whose parents were killed by the younger man’s father. Read More
Running Time: 113
Memoir of War
When Marguerite, a writer and resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied France, learns her husband has been deported to an unknown location, she forges an unsettling alliance with a chilling enemy collaborator to do whatever it takes to find him. Read More
Running Time: 127
Never Look Away
Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Best Foreign Language Film Oscar®-winner for The Lives of Others) once again plows the fertile soil of communist East Germany for this soul-stirring drama about an artist (Tom Schilling) facing questions of artistic and moral integrity in the face of tyranny. Read More
Running Time: 188
The Resistance Banker
Set in occupied Netherlands during World War II, this suspenseful drama is based on the true story of banker Walraven van Hall, who financed the Dutch Resistance by defrauding the German-controlled Central Bank out of tens of millions of guilders — right under the Nazis’ noses. Read More
Running Time: 123
Ruben Blades Is Not My Name
An energizing and intimate look at the legacy of musician/actor/politician Rubén Blades as he begins a new chapter in his life and reflects on his triumphs, failures, surprises and a fearless love of others that has fueled a legendary career. Read More
Running Time: 85
Secret Ingredient
A railway mechanic finds a marijuana stash on board a train and bakes some into a cake to help his ailing father. His father’s health miraculously improves, but his neighbors demand the recipe and mobsters want their missing drugs back. Read More
Running Time: 104
Sew the Winter to My Skin
Set in 1950s South Africa, Sew the Winter to My Skin is a poetic reimagining of folk hero John Kepe, a real-life outlaw who was an Apartheid-era Robin Hood. Not your standard biopic, it is a cinematic genre-defying Western-epic-adventure, light on dialogue but visually stunning and with a glorious score to match. Read More
Running Time: 131
Take It Or Leave It
Raising a child as a working-class single parent is tough. This social-issues drama adds a new twist as it follows a young construction worker struggling to raise the child born to his former girlfriend on his own. Read More
Running Time: 102
A Twelve-Year-Night
When three revolutionaries are taken hostage by the Uruguayan dictatorship of the early 1970s, they struggle for basic survival, each holding on to the smallest glimmer of hope, and unwittingly help transform a nation. Read More
Running Time: 122
Village Rockstars
This amazing musical vision — scripted, directed, shot, edited and produced by Rima Das — is the beautiful tale of a young girl from the backwaters of Assam who dreams of having a real guitar instead of her cardboard make-believe version and forming her own rock group. Read More
Running Time: 87
The Waldheim Waltz
When Kurt Waldheim ran for president of Austria in 1986, the World Jewish Congress brought to light previously unknown details of his wartime service as a Nazi officer. A film about truth and lies and how a dishonest man can rise to power. Read More
Running Time: 93
The Wedding Ring
Tiyaa returns home to the Republic of Niger, after studying in France. The reunion with her affluent family and friends is tainted by the melancholy caused by an unresolved relationship she left behind in Paris. The new moon should help her figure out her next step. Read More
Running Time: 97
What Will People Say
A first-generation Norwegian teen clashes with the traditional values and expectations of her Pakistani immigrant parents in this compelling coming-of-age drama. Writer/director Iram Haq (I Am Yours, PSIFF 2014) smartly probes the problems of a character caught between cultures. Read More
Running Time: 106
Winter Flies
In this seriocomic Czech road movie, two early adolescent boys barrel across the wintry back roads in a stolen Audi neither is old enough to drive. Winner of the Best Director prize at Karlovy Vary, this coming-of-age saga is a beguiling gem. Read More
Running Time: 85
Woman at War
From the director of Of Horses and Men, this satisfying comedic crowd-pleaser tackles urgent global issues with humor and aplomb. Halla is a middle-aged Reykjavik choir conductor, but she’s also a secret eco-warrior, fighting to save the Icelandic countryside from industrial pollution. Read More
Running Time: 101
Yellow Is Forbidden
Star Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei, the face of the “new China,” gave documentary filmmaker Pïetra Brettkelly an all-access pass for this fascinating — and occasionally troubling — behind-the-scenes look at Guo’s life and the run-up to her make-or-break Paris runway show. Read More
Running Time: 94