This year’s international race started late but with a bang at July’s delayed Cannes Film Festival, which premiered almost 20 films that would go on to represent their countries in the category. Eight of those would make the shortlist and two, Drive My Car and The Worst Person in the World, would be nominated. It was a year in which Scandinavia landed four films on the shortlist and got two nominations, and one that started without clear frontrunners but ended with a consensus top five going into the voting. But in a category well known for surprises, two-time winner Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero slipped out to make way for a first-time director.
BHUTAN, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Pawo Choyning Dorji had never made a feature when he decided to film this story in a remote region of Bhutan that can only be reached by a 10-day trek with mules. With one camera running on solar-power batteries, he enlisted amateur actors who’d never even seen a movie. Shouldn’t he have picked something easier for his first movie? “That’s what my friends all said,” Dorji said with a laugh. “They always say you shouldn’t work with children or animals, but I had a class of children who had never acted before and a 600-kilo yak.”
Denmark, Flee
Also nominated in the animated-feature and documentary categories, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee is a Danish film that begins in Afghanistan and follows a refugee as he heads to Russia before finding refuge in Scandinavia. It’s not lost on the filmmaker that his movie came out while more Afghans were fleeing the country as the Taliban took control. “I’m in touch with (the lead character) Amin all the time, and he was heartbroken because he could see all these young Afghans in the same situation he was,” Rasmussen said. “It brought back a lot of those memories that he had trouble handling when we were doing interviews for the film.”
Italy, The Hand of God
Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s past movies, including the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, tended to be elaborate fantasias that were often called Felliniesque. But where the director borrowed from Fellini’s extravagant side for his previous work, The Hand of God is simplified, scaled-down and more personal: It’s a nostalgic piece based on Sorrentino’s memories of his youth. “It was clear to me from the very beginning that this movie needed a different style—very simple,” he said.
Japan, Drive My Car
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour drama only won the screenplay award from Spike Lee’s jury in Cannes, but it became the year’s most-honored international film with wins from stateside critics. The story of a theater director who directs a production of Uncle Vanya in the aftermath of a tragic loss, it even pleased Haruki Murakami, the author from whose short story it was adapted. “He said he was not sure which portions came from his original work and which hadn’t,” said Hamaguchi.
Norway, The Worst Person in the World
The lightest of the nominated films, Joachim Trier’s film artfully mixes comedy and drama as it presents episodes in the life of a young woman (Cannes best-actress winner Renate Reinsve) trying to find herself in Oslo. “I’m sure there are millions of personal reasons why I finally felt mature enough to make a story about love, but also the film nerd in me wanted to play around,” Trier said. “I wanted to do something that starts with levity and humor and then gets more serious, and to make something honest about love today.”
Steve’s Perspective
Under the old rules in this category, where voters had to see all five nominees in a theater in order to cast a ballot, there would have been a chance for The Worst Person in the World or even the ultimate sleeper, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, to score an upset. But under current, honor-system rules, and with Drive My Car also landing Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations, most of the suspense has seemingly gone out of this particular race, with Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s adaptation of Murakami assuming the air of near-invincibility that Parasite and Roma have had in recent years.
