Documentary Feature Focus: Oscars Lays Out The Welcome Mat To A Wide Range Of International Films
12.01.2023 - 23:03
/ deadline.com
In theory, international films can earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture in any given year. But in reality, only a handful have ever attained that distinction, and a single one — Parasite — has claimed the prize.
For a truly global competition — international and American films contending in the same category — turn to the Best Documentary Feature race. This year alone, shortlisted documentaries vying for a nomination originate from China, Vietnam, India, Ukraine, Canada and the U.S.
Vietnamese director Ha Le Diem shot her shortlisted film Children of the Mist in a Hmong community in Northern Vietnam, where teenage girls are routinely kidnapped by male suitors and coerced into marriages. Di, the 14-year-old heroine of the documentary, flirts with a boy who soon abducts her and with help from his family tries to force her to accept him as her husband.
“New Year is the season of bride kidnapping, and it is allowed,” Di’s mother informs her young daughter. Di says into camera, “Mum means that if I am kidnapped, I must cope on my own.”
Children of the Mist made the shortlist despite not benefiting from a major distributor. The same is true of Hidden Letters, directed by Violet du Feng and Qing Zhao. That film explores gender relations in contemporary China through the lens of two protagonists who come from a part of the country where women developed a secret language to cope with suffocating patriarchy.
“Four hundred years ago in feudal society in China, where women had bound feet,” du Feng has said, “and were deprived rights of education, they decided to create their own language by writing poems and songs to give each other hope and dignity… The language survived.”
In an earlier era of the Academy,