Int’l Critics Line: Anna Smith On Taiwan’s Oscar-Shortlisted ‘A Sun’

In Disney’s Mulan, composer Harry Gregson-Williams found the opportunity to put his stamp on the journey of a classic Disney character. In his second collaboration with director Niki Caro, Gregson-Williams would pen a score and co-write an original song, “Loyal Brave True,” seeing both of these works shortlisted for the Oscars in their respective categories on February 9.

website, more than a third of all jobs in the town come from the tourism industry.But, as a result of COVID-19, that industry has obviously taken a hit. So, in hopes of boosting their numbers again, the townspeople have created a video Oscar campaign.Also Read: 'Eurovision Song Contest' Film Review: Will Ferrell as an Icelandic Wannabe Pop Star?It follows a man from Husavik named Oskar Oskarsson (because what else would he be named?).

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film CriticIn a year ravished by the global pandemic, when millions have lost jobs, loved ones and mobility, an intimate family drama from Taiwan with profound lessons on survival appears particularly timely.“A Sun,” directed by Chung Mong-hong, is a slow-burning study of a dysfunctional family devastated by unexpected tragedy and struggling to hold together in spite of surrounding menace.

The Pygmalion myth gets a gender flip in I’m Your Man, the Berlin Film Festival competition entry from Germany’s Maria Schrader. Maren Eggert stars as Alma, a single anthropologist who agrees to live with a humanoid robot for three weeks as part of a trial testing period. Thomas (Dan Stevens) has been designed as Alma’s ideal partner, using algorithms based on her brain scans, her responses and research involving 17 million people.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentThe Party Film Sales has closed further deals on Filippo Meneghetti’s romance “Two of Us,” which represents France in the international feature film race at the Oscars and is part of 15 shortlisted films.Headlined by Martine Chevallier and Barbara Sukowa, the Golden Globe-nominated feature debut follows Nina and Madeleine, two pensioners who have hidden their deep and passionate love for many decades and see their bond put to the test when they are

Whether by accident or design, the ultra-low-budget Language Lessons feels like a definitive film for the Covid-19 era, as the two main actors never appear in the same shot together until the very end. Seemingly created on two computers, this exceedingly modest tale of a Spanish-language instructor and pupil who meet online becomes more genially engaging as it goes along, although it never aims very high other than as a technical experiment that more or less succeeds.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chile scored twice at this year’s Oscars derby with Maite Alberdi’s genre-bending documentary “The Mole Agent.” For a Chilean film to be shortlisted for both the International Feature Film and Documentary categories is unprecedented.

Horror is woven into political drama in La Llorona, the riveting Golden Globe Foreign Language Film nominee and shortlisted International Feature Oscar contender from Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante. An elderly wealthy man hears ghostly noises in the night.

Norwegian director Maria Sodhal made her first feature, Limbo, a decade ago and her second makes the reason for the long time gap dramatically clear: She developed lung cancer, which then metastasized and spread to her brain, a virtual death sentence. But she fought back and lived to make a film about it, the closely observed Hope, which is all she had going for her as she faced almost certain oblivion.

Sue Kim, director of an Oscar-shortlisted short documentary about competitive Rubik’s Cubers, can solve a complex storytelling puzzle in under 40 minutes.

Majid Majidi has been making sensitive and trenchant films about kids in Iran for three decades and he’s still doing it in Sun Children (Khorshid), a shrewdly observed humanistic drama about some young teens scrambling to make their way in a difficult world.

EXCLUSIVE: MTV Documentary Films is adding Skye Fitzgerald’s Hunger Ward to its portfolio of Oscar-contending films.

A prisoner becomes a storyteller in Night Of The Kings, Ivory Coast’s vivid International Feature Oscar shortlist selection written and directed by Philippe Lacôte (Run). Newcomer Bakary Koné stars as a pickpocket who arrives at La MACA, a notorious prison in the Ivorian forest.

Final exams have rarely taken a heavier toll than they do in Better Days, an arresting teen-oriented story that cranks Chinese scholastic competitiveness into the realm of murderous melodrama.

When documentary maker Alexander Nanau started filming a team of investigative journalists in the aftermath of a tragic fire, no one knew the staggering level of corruption they would uncover. The blaze at Bucharest’s Colectiv club in 2015 left 27 dead and 180 injured. When more burn victims began dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening, the Romanian newspaper Sports Gazette started probing into the health service.

A mother abducts her own children in Charter, a riveting watch from writer-director Amanda Kernell (Sami Blood). Norwegian actress Ane Dahl Torp puts in a powerhouse turn as Alice, the desperate, impetuous divorcée who decides to take her daughter and son to Tenerife amid a bitter custody battle.

The opening scene of Dara Of Jasenovac, Serbia’s submission to the International Feature Oscar race, gives a poignant hint of the horrors to come. The setting is rural Croatia in the 1940s.

In 1962, a group of striking factory workers was massacred in the industrial Russian town of Novocherkassk. The shocking event, and the ensuing cover-up, is explored in intimate and meticulous detail by veteran filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky in Dear Comrades!, this year’s submission from Russia to the International Feature Oscar race.

This year’s International Feature Oscar entry from Armenia, Songs Of Solomon, boasts Green Book Academy Award-winning co-writer/producer Nick Vallelonga as producer for the film debut of theater director Arman Nshanian. Songs Of Solomon is a relatively low-budget but emotive watch, contrasting the power of music and friendship with the horrors of genocide.