A clos­er look at this year’s Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Oscar also-rans

Ear­li­er this week, the Oscar race shift­ed up a gear as a few of the key con­tests released the short­lists nar­row­ing their field of eli­gi­ble com­peti­tors for the five prop­er nom­i­na­tions. Best Orig­i­nal Song, Ani­mat­ed Film, and the new­ly rechris­tened Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film cat­e­gories have all sep­a­rat­ed the wheat from the chaff in antic­i­pa­tion of the vot­ing peri­od for the final slots that will begin in January.

Our pre­dic­tions about who would make the cut were large­ly on-the-mon­ey, which amounts to both good and bad news. It’s good news in the sense that it’s good and nice to be right about things, but regret­table in that it means for the lion’s share of the sub­mis­sions from around the globe, this spells the end of their pres­ence on the glob­al stage. In the inter­est of bring­ing some addi­tion­al atten­tion to the year’s small­er exports, here are six of the also-rans that may not have made the cut for the short­list, but still more than mer­it a clos­er look.

Net­flix devot­ed their pro­mo­tion­al bud­get to ram­ming Mati Diop’s superb Atlantics through the nom­i­nat­ing process, which left the Unit­ed Kingdom’s entry hung up to dry. In a year that found an African film dis­qual­i­fied for using too much Eng­lish, Chi­we­tel Ejio­for made his direc­to­r­i­al debut with an Eng­lish-speak­ing nation’s film accept­able on the grounds that it’s main­ly in the African lan­guage of Chichewa.

The true sto­ry of a pen­ni­less Malaw­ian kid who saved his vil­lage by using his auto­di­dact engi­neer­ing skills to jer­ry-rig a wind­mill pow­er­ing an elec­tric water pump, it’s a ring­ing tes­ta­ment to the resource­ful­ness and intel­li­gence flow­er­ing in the unlike­li­est of places. A genius can come to us from any­where, and with enough per­se­ver­ance and hard work, they can make a dif­fer­ence start­ing at home. For kids look­ing to break into an increas­ing­ly diver­si­fied STEM field, it’s an inspi­ra­tional case study. (And the breath­tak­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Dick Pope doesn’t hurt, either.)

Much like Net­flix, NEON had to put all of their Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture eggs in one bas­ket (though their Par­a­site looks like the odds-on win­ner), but crit­ics have still made some­thing of a stir over Ale­jan­dro Lan­des’ bro­ken-down-and-recon­sti­tut­ed genre film from Colom­bia. In a moun­tain­top strong­hold high above the clouds high above the jun­gle high above civ­i­liza­tion, a teenage para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion led by the diminu­tive yet bru­tal com­man­der known as The Mes­sen­ger pre­pares for some­thing. We don’t know what, but judg­ing from the Amer­i­can hostage, it won’t be good.

Lan­des uses his Lord of the Flies-esque set­up – unsu­per­vised youth turn­ing to their baser impuls­es when cut off from polite soci­ety – as the scaf­fold­ing for some mag­nif­i­cent for­mal exper­i­ments. His work with slow motion and pro­tract­ed close-ups as well as his deploy­ment of Mica Levi’s hel­la­cious score cre­ate an atmos­phere of mad­ness to mir­ror the psy­cho­log­i­cal break­down of the char­ac­ters onscreen. More­over, the film­mak­er lodges a vicious cri­tique of west­ern colo­nial­ist excep­tion­al­ism, fram­ing the kids’ fortress as a dark eden safe from the influ­ence of the outside.

We were quite tak­en with this Swedish-Geor­gian copro­duc­tion (it’s about a Geor­gian dance ensem­ble, but it’s Sweden’s sub­mis­sion in an offi­cial capac­i­ty) out of its pre­mière at the Direc­tors’ Fort­night at Cannes Film Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this year. Our man on the scene Ed Fran­kl wrote, ​“Anchored by a host of excel­lent young per­form­ers, there’s an infec­tious joy to the film, with a spir­it of defi­ance despite its painful depic­tion of artis­tic and sex­u­al repression.”

Lev­an Akin focus­es on one young man who’s got his eye set on excel­lence, and with his female dance part­ner, the path to it is clear. But the intro­duc­tion of a new tal­ent to the ensem­ble con­fronts him with his first rival and first crush, a com­bi­na­tion of feel­ings made all the more con­fus­ing by the repres­sive dic­tates of ortho­doxy in still-rel­a­tive­ly-con­ser­v­a­tive Geor­gia. He defi­ant­ly dances his way through com­pul­so­ry het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty in a film leav­en­ing its heavy look into LGBTQ per­se­cu­tion with daz­zling musi­cal numbers.

Mako­to Shinkai is one of the biggest names in Japan­ese ani­ma­tion right now, and his lat­est fea­ture re-estab­lished for the umpteenth time why that is. Set aside the ten­der love sto­ry between lone­ly souls grasp­ing at one anoth­er in brief pass­ing, set aside the soft­ened sci-fi angling toward glob­al warm­ing com­men­tary – inde­pen­dent of con­text, analy­sis, what-have-you, this is an over­whelm­ing­ly gor­geous film. Shinkai grace­ful­ly clears the hur­dles of artis­ti­cal­ly ren­der­ing light and water, two ele­ments tricky to artic­u­late onscreen and essen­tial to the sto­ry he’s cho­sen to tell.

A down-on-his-luck street teen falls in with (and falls in love with) a ​“sun­shine girl,” rumored by leg­end to be able to con­trol the weath­er. They start a lucra­tive clement-con­di­tions-for-pay busi­ness, but it quick­ly spins out into poten­tial cat­a­clysm as she reck­ons with forces beyond her con­trol. It boasts one of the year’s most dis­arm­ing, unex­pect­ed end­ings, as Shinkai dares to won­der whether a great flood to wipe dele­te­ri­ous human­i­ty off the face of the plan­et might not be the worst thing right now.

Elia Suleiman’s grand return to film­mak­ing after a 10-year hia­tus proved that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The sit­u­a­tion between Pales­tine and Israel has dete­ri­o­rat­ed, but for Suleiman’s dead­pan stand-in char­ac­ter, it’s right back to the hilar­i­ous­ly bleak ten­sions and Tatiesque wide-shot com­e­dy and over­ar­ch­ing sense of despair that defined his ear­li­er work. One gag involv­ing cops on Seg­ways, weav­ing around one anoth­er as if in a chore­o­graphed bal­let, could have been lift­ed right from his mas­ter­ly The Time That Remains.

But the Pales­tin­ian great’s lat­est effort advances his oeu­vre by send­ing him on the road, as ​“Elia” decides the time is right to get out of the Mid­dle East and see if life might be bet­ter abroad. Of course it is not, as he trav­els through Paris, New York, and oth­er metro areas only to find the same absur­di­ty, hos­til­i­ty, and sense­less­ness he was try­ing to escape at home. And all the guy want­ed was to tend his lemon tree in peace!

The year’s major work of Chi­nese mis­er­ab­lism was Hu Bo’s shat­ter­ing An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still, but their neigh­bors in Sin­ga­pore offered this wor­thy com­pan­ion piece that also stared unblink­ing at the human toll of indus­tri­al­iza­tion in Asia. In it, a police­man sent to inves­ti­gate the death of a work­er at a con­struc­tion site keeps dig­ging deep­er and deep­er, and finds that there’s no bot­tom to the greed and cor­rup­tion of those on the win­ning side of cap­i­tal­ism. The class sys­tem has a body count.

The scenes focus­ing on the mechan­ics of the work­site, the sludge of cement slid­ing through chut­ing in par­tic­u­lar, present a potent metaphor of man­made influ­ence chok­ing out the course of nature. In fright­ful­ly lit­er­al fash­ion, the film even­tu­al­ly boils down to the old expres­sion: if you work for a liv­ing, then why kill your­self working?