What Will Make the Oscar Shortlists in Documentary, International and Animation Categories?

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.

Italy’s Piedmont region is a country for old men, to judge from the new documentary The Truffle Hunters.

Neon’s boutique label Super Ltd has picked up North American rights to buzzy Bosnian drama Quo Vadis, Aida?, which is on this year’s shortlist for the International Oscar.

“Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa” Directors: Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie Made in the aftermath of the 2016 election as a way to put a focus on threatened reproductive rights, “Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa” takes place entirely in a Philadelphia center where counselors try to use the center’s meager funds to help poor women who can’t afford to end their pregnancies.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today is widely acknowledged as a hero, a martyr in the long struggle to end racial prejudice and inequality in America.

People are talking about H.E.R., who recently rocked Super Bowl LV with a soulful rendition of "America the Beautiful" (with a guitar solo that would have made Prince smile) and whose groovy throwback "Fight for You" can be heard in Warner Bros.' Judas and the Black Messiah, about the 1969 police assassination of Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton.

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.

Next time someone asks what’s good on Netflix, you might want to point them to this winner that’s been lurking there since January 2020. A victor at the Golden Horse Awards and now shortlisted for the International Feature Film Oscar, A Sun is a bold, involving tale of crime, punishment, tragedy and healing — all within a seemingly ordinary family of four in Taiwan.

If someone were to ask you about Crestone, Colorado, you likely won’t have much to say about the town. It’s a fairly nondescript mountain town that is definitely beautiful.

Oscars ceremony. Danish tragicomedy "Another Round" stars former James Bond villain Mikkelsen as a middle-aged alcoholic who vows to get drunk every day, as part of a pseudoscientific experiment featuring three fellow school teachers.

This year’s Oscar Original Song shortlist has recognized a number of tunes from Black narrative or documentary films, however, the Academy has never ducked their heads when it comes to embracing a silly song; and we’re talking specifically about “Wuhan Flu” from Amazon’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and “Husavik” from Netflix’s Will Ferrell-Rachel McAdams comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. 

There’s still a ton of mystery about what will receive Oscar nominations this year, but today a tiny bit of that disappeared. Yes, the Academy announced nine category shortlists, helping to let us know who and what are still in contention below the line.

Also Read: Oscars Eliminate Executive Committee Picks for International Feature, Expand ShortlistThe rest of the list: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Guatemala’s “La Llorona,” Hong Kong’s “Better Days,” Iran’s “Sun Children,” Norway’s “Hope,” “Russia’s “Dear Comrades!” and Tunisia’s “The Man Who Sold His Skin.”Normally, the general voters would choose all but three of the films on the shortlist, and then an executive committee would look at the results and add three additional

Best Animated Short “Burrow” “Genius Loci” “If Anything Happens I Love You” “Kapaemahu” “Opera” “Out” “The Snail and the Whale” “To Gerard” “Traces” “Yes-People”Best Live-Action Short “Bittu” “Da Yie” “Feeling Through” “The Human Voice” “The Kicksled Choir” “The Letter Room” “The Present” “Two Distant Strangers” “The Van” “White Eye” 

The Oscar shortlists are out in nine categories including International Film, Documentary Feature, Music Score and Song, Makeup & Hairstyling, Visual Effects and Shorts. These are the first indicator of strength in the race for the 93rd Annual Academy Awards and, though the lists contain few real surprises, is especially good news for those films that are mentioned more than once.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to Tarzan and Arab Nasser’s Gaza Mon Amour, Palestine’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film will be released later this year.

With international buyers unable to travel to Germany to scout movies at year’s Berlin International Film Festival, the event will instead bring a selection of titles from its program to them through new initiative ‘EFM goes global’.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE The Music Branch’s shortlists are typically short on surprises — and when those do happen, they usually involve composers or songwriters who’ve been longtime members of the branch and have lots of friends in the Academy.