The Foreigners of the Oscars January 8–18, 2015

As the Academy Awards are approaching, Istanbul Modern Cinema offers a reminder of the candidates for “Best Foreign Language Film.” “The Foreigners of the Oscars” presents a selection of films which were cited to compete in the Oscar race whose nominees are soon to be announced. The films in the program represent a category which brings together films from diverse cultures and languages which were big hits in world festivals and, despite being Oscar-nominated, are outside the Hollywood track. Among films featured in the program are the Georgian entry Corn Island (Simindis Kundzuli) starring Ilyas Salman; Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure from Sweden, which won the Jury Prize in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival; Leviathan which won the award for “Best Screenplay” at the Cannes Film Festival this year and whose director Andrey Zvyagintsev won the Golden Lion in 2003 with his film The Return; and Mauritania’s entry about the silent resistance, Timbuktu, the latest film by Abderrahmane Sissako, one of the most renowned filmmakers of African cinema.