85 countries will be competing for Best Foreign Language Feature nominations at the Oscars

Yesterday afternoon, the long list of countries submitting films for contention in Best Foreign Language Feature at the Oscars was revealed. With 85 movies in play, this is a record breaking group. Honestly, from what I could see, only three snubs seemed to be here, which was Belgium not choosing The Unknown Girl, Korea not choosing The Handmaiden, and Romania not choosing Graduation. Aside from those, all of the expected suspects are here for consideration. That gives us the first bit of information in trying to narrow down what will be nominated. My predictions will have to be updated (look for that either at the end of this week or next week), but that will be taken care of. For now, we just know the players. What you’ll see below are more contenders than ever before. Among the higher profile titles are Canada’s It’s Only the End of the World from Xavier Dolan, Chile’s Neruda from Pablo Larraín, France’s Elle from Paul Verhoeven, Germany’s Toni Erdmann from Maren Ade, Iran’s The Salesman from Asghar Farhadi, Mexico’s Desierto from Jonás Cuarón, Palestine’s The Idol from Hany Abu-Assad, and Spain’s Julieta from Pedro Almodóvar. Now, I’m not saying that these eight are the top players for Oscar nominations, but at least one or two will surely wind up in the final five. They just have most of the buzz at the moment, for what that’s worth. Here are all 85 titles in contention for a potential nomination at the Academy Awards: Albania – Chromium (Bujar Alimani) Algeria – The Well (Lotfi Bouchouchi) Argentina – The Distinguished Citizen (Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat) Australia – Tanna (Martin Butler and Bentley Dean) Austria – Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (Maria Schrader) Bangladesh – The Unnamed (Tauquir Ahmed) Belgium – The Ardennes (Robin Pront) Bolivia – Sealed Cargo (Julia Vargas Weise) Bosnia and Herzegovina – Death in Sarajevo (Danis Tanovic) Brazil – Little Secret (David Schurmann) Bulgaria – Losers (Ivaylo Hristov) Cambodia – Before the Fall (Ian White) Canada – It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan) Chile – Neruda (Pablo Larraín) China – Xuan Zang (Huo Jianqi) Colombia – Alias Maria (José Luis Rugeles) Costa Rica – About Us (Hernán Jiménez) Croatia – On the Other Side (Zrinko Ogresta) Cuba – The Companion (Pavel Giroud) Czech Republic – Lost in Munich (Petr Zelenka) Denmark – Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet) Dominican Republic – Sugar Fields (Fernando Báez) Ecuador – Such Is Life in the Tropics (Sebastián Cordero) Egypt – Clash (Mohamed Diab) Estonia – Mother (Kadri Kõusaar) Finland – The [...]