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TIFF showcases Oscar foreign film hopefuls

TIFF is often cited as the place movies unofficially start their race to the Academy Awards, but a few titles screening at this year's edition are already bonafide contenders for the elusive Oscar.
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Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions, Japan's official entry for Oscar consideration, is a dark, stylized tale of vengeance sought by a teacher whose daughter has been killed by two of her students. ((TIFF))

TIFF is often cited as the place movies unofficially start their race to the Academy Awards, but a few titles screening at this year's edition are already bonafide contenders for the elusive Oscar.

As the academy's deadline approaches, countries around the globe are naming their official picks for Oscar's best foreign language film category for next year's ceremony. Several have been featured in TIFF's 2010 program, including:

  • South Africa, which tapped Oliver Schmitz's HIV drama Life, Above All — based on a novel by Toronto's Allan Stratton and a screenplay by Vancouver's Dennis Foon.
  • Japan, which has selected Tetsuya Nakashima's dark, high school-set revenge tale Kokuhaku (Confessions) to compete for the Oscar.
  • Russia, which placed its hopes on Krai (The Edge), a post-Second World War Siberia-set thriller directed by Alexey Uchitel.

 Candidates submitted for consideration for Oscar's best foreign language film category must adhere to a number of criteria. For instance:
  • They must be feature-length, produced outside the U.S. and with predominantly non-English dialogue.
  • They must be released theatrically in the country submitting it. This year, the film must have screened in a commercial theatre for at least seven consecutive days, by Sept. 30.

Two of the three films on Spain's Oscar bid shortlist are also screening in Toronto: Lupe, Andrucha Waddington's portrait of the nation's famed writer Lope de Vega, and Even the Rain, Iciar Bollain's Bolivia-set, film-within-a-film tale exploring ancient and more recent exploitation of Latin Americans.

In the past decade, the vast majority of Oscar's best foreign film winners have screened at TIFF, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Canada's own Les invasions babares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2003), Tsotsi (2005), The Lives of Others (2006) and The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).

All countries must submit their selections to the academy by Oct. 1.

The foreign film finalists will be announced — along with shortlisted contenders in all other categories — in January, with the 83rd annual Academy Awards gala to follow on Feb. 27, 2011.

In Alexey Uchitel's The Edge, the arrival of a decorated war hero takes a Siberian labour camp by storm. ((TIFF))
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