Academy Narrows Foreign Language Oscar Race to 9 Contenders; Saudi Arabia and Iran Surprise Snubs

IndieWire | 20 Dec. 2013

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has just announced the nine films that will contend for an Oscar nomination. Notable exceptions are previous winner Asghar Farhadi for his new film "The Past" (Iran), Berlinale standout "Gloria" (Chile), Canada's entry "Gabrielle," and our prognosticator Peter Knegt's top choice for the award, Haifaa Al-Mansour's "Wadjda," which was the #2 Best First Feature on our annual critics' poll. 

READ: Updated 2014 Oscar Predictions: Best Foreign Language Film

From here, the nine films still in the running will be watched by selected committees in New York and Los Angeles the week preceding the nominations announcement on January 16.

The nine films still in contention are:

Belgium, "The Broken Circle Breakdown," Felix van Groeningen, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker," Danis Tanovic, director;
Cambodia, "The Missing Picture," Rithy Panh, director;
Denmark, "The Hunt," Thomas Vinterberg, director;
Germany, "Two Lives," Georg Maas, director;
Hong Kong, "The Grandmaster," Wong Kar-wai, director;
Hungary, "The Notebook," Janos Szasz, director;
Italy, "The Great Beauty," Paolo Sorrentino, director;
Palestine, "Omar," Hany Abu-Assad, director.