Edko buyers choose films with eye on Oscar

Tomorrow morning Hong Kong time, we'll find out - along with the winners of the other Academy Awards categories - which movie has won the best foreign-language film Oscar.

But regardless of which movie wins - the nominees are (Belgium), (Italy), (Denmark), (Cambodia) and (Palestine) - the people at Edko Films will be celebrating.

The story of how the company, which operates the Broadway cinema circuit, became the local distributor for all five films began about two years ago. At the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Edko creative director Leung Yuet-ngor attended a screening of - and she couldn't wait to tell sales and acquisitions general manager Audrey Lee Yuk-lan about the film, so powerful is the impact of Danish director Thomas Vinterberg's thought-provoking drama about a preschool teacher whose life is shattered by a lie.

Lee was at Cannes to seal deals, including pre-buys of films still at the script stage. "I usually don't have time to see movies … I'll be in a meeting, negotiating, dealing with the pricing," she says. But Leung told her the story "in every single detail", Lee says. "It was like I had watched the movie myself." So Lee acquired the movie "even though the asking price was quite high". And when she finally watched , she was equally impressed. "People should watch more films … [they] will open up your mind," she says.

Lee and her team, like the other distributors such as Golden Scene, Panasia and Intercontinental, buy films at foreign markets. Edko's sources include the American Film Market in California, and those associated with the Cannes, Toronto and Berlin festivals.

The other four foreign-language nominees were also picked up at Cannes last year.