Films from 61 countries competed for the five coveted nominee slots to win the 2006 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Each nation is allowed to submit one picture only to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and a special Academy committee—a tiny fraction of the membership, with no particular qualifications—screens the submissions and must agree by consensus on the publicized roster of five. The 2006 slate was particularly strong:
- Algeria, Days of Glory, Rachid Bouchareb, director
- Canada, Water, Deepa Mehta, director
- Denmark, After the Wedding, Susanne Bier, director
- Germany, The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director
- Mexico, Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, director
with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck taking home the statuette for The Lives of Others, a gripping political thriller set in 1984’s East Berlin, tracing the lives of a playwright and the Stasi agent who spies on him.
But what about the 56 films that didn’t make the final cut? Unfortunately, many of them didn’t get picked up for American distribution, as they were not deemed commercial enough for even a limited release. On the bright side, though, perhaps more than ever before—approximately a third of the 2006 titles—have gotten an American release via smaller, more adventurous distributors. And Cornell Cinema is thrilled to present a selection of some of these little-known, albeit wonderful, films in this calendar:
- Argentina, Family Law, Daniel Burman
- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Grbavica, Jasmila Zbanic
- Hungary, White Palms, Szabolcs Hajdu
- Italy, The Golden Door, Emanuele Crialese
We’re also showing one of the five nominees, Susanne Bier’s highly praised After the Wedding (Denmark), as we missed it when it played in town and we figured we weren’t the only ones. Look for more selections later this year and beyond, as we expect to screen The Yacoubian Building (Egypt), Madeinusa (Peru) and Vitus (Switzerland).