The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today named the nine films advancing to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category, and the animated French feature Persepolis is not among them. The omission could signify that the Academy plans to have the pic in the running for Best Animated Feature as the 80th Academy Awards ceremony approaches. Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 5:30 a.m. (PT) in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
The foreign films that did make the cut are: Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters (Austria), Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil), Denys Arcand’s Days of Darkness (Canada), Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort (Israel), Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown (Italy), Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol (Kazakhstan), Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn (Poland), Nikita Mikhalkov’s 12 (Russia) and Srdan Golubovic’s The Trap (Serbia). Other notable absentees were Romania’s Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days and Spain’s The Orphanage.
Foreign Language Film nominations for 2007 are being determined in two phases. The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 63 eligible films and their ballots determined the above shortlist. A Phase II committee made up of ten randomly selected members from the Phase I group will then be joined by specially invited ten-member contingents in New York and Los Angeles to view the shortlisted films and select the five nominees for the category.
Assuming the writers’ strike doesn’t rain on the picnic like it did the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards ceremony will be presented on Sunday, Feb. 24 at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. (PT).
