Johnnie To, Chen Kaige on Oscars long list for best foreign film
French blockbuster Les Intouchables and Austrian Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner Love are hot tips for best foreign language Oscar, from a long-list of candidates. Hong Kong movie master Johnnie To and China’s Chen Kaige are also among films from 71 countries which could be vying for an Academy statuette.
French blockbuster Les Intouchables and Austrian Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner Love are hot tips for best foreign language Oscar, from a long-list of candidates published on Monday.
Hong Kong movie master Johnnie To and China’s Chen Kaige -- whose Farewell My Concubine won the top Cannes film festival prize in 1993 -- are also among films from 71 countries which could be vying for an Academy statuette.
Iran, whose A Separation won foreign language Oscar for Asghar Farhadi this year, has no entry after Iranian authorities last month withdrew their candidate due anger at a US-made anti-Islam online film.
Les Intouchables (The Intouchables) by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano has become the second biggest domestic box office and the biggest French film ever at the box office overseas.
It tells the moving and poignant story of a wealthy quadriplegic Frenchman who hires a young black man from an urban ghetto to look after him following a horrific road crash.
Austrian filmmaker Haneke won the Cannes film festival’s top prize in May, three years after taking it home for the first time with 2009’s The White Ribbon.