The Academy Awards recognised tales of struggle, suffering and love in the foreign-language category with its nomination of five films from Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The list includes Belgian filmmaker Felix van Groeningen's The Broken Circle Breakdown, about a music-loving couple facing the serious illness of their child, and Dutch-Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad's Omar, the story of a love affair and its consequences against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also nominated are The Hunt from Denmark, The Great Beauty from Italy and Cambodian drama The Missing Picture. The winner will be announced at the 86th Oscars ceremony on March 2.
The best foreign language film category is unpredictable, in part because countries nominate just one feature each - causing surprise omissions. The highly praised French lesbian drama Blue is the Warmest Color, a Palme d'Or winner, was not submitted by France because it opened too late to qualify.
But it is a chance for highly personal films from small countries to gain big international audiences.
"If there's a message here, it's make the kind of movie you want, believe in yourself and don't copycat," said a delighted van Groeningen after learning of his film's nomination.
"It's been a wild ride to make this film," he says. "There's something crazy about this movie. The Americans really love it. They respond really emotionally to it. But on the other hand, they wouldn't make that kind of movie."
An Israeli-born director of Palestinian descent, Abu-Assad earned a previous Oscar nomination - and courted some controversy - for his 2005 film Paradise Now, about two young West Bank men preparing to be suicide bombers. Omar also touches on a sensitive subject, focusing on a Palestinian man who becomes an informer for the Israelis. Even the nomination announcement was politically charged; Omar was called a film from Palestine, rather than the Palestinian territories, as his earlier film was described. Neither the Academy nor Israel had any comment on the nomenclature.