The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that nine feature films have been shortlisted for the next round of voting in the foreign language film Oscar category out of a total of 76 films that had originally been considered in the category.
Foreign language film nominations for 2013 are being determined in two phases.
The phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based Academy members, screened the original submissions between mid-October and Dec. 16. The group’s top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s foreign language film award executive committee, constitute the shortlist.
The shortlist will be winnowed down to the five nominees by specially invited committees in New York and Los Angeles. They will spend Jan. 10-12 viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.
The shortlisted films are:
Belgium
The Broken Circle Breakdown, directed by Felix van Groeningen
Bosnia and Herzegovina
An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, directed by Danis Tanovic
Cambodia
The Missing Picture, directed by Rithy Panh
Denmark
The Hunt, directed by Thomas Vinterberg
Germany
Two Lives, directed by Georg Maas
Hong Kong
The Grandmaster, directed by Wong Kar-wai
Hungary
The Notebook, directed by Janos Szasz
Italy
The Great Beauty, directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Palestine
Omar, directed by Hany Abu-Assad
