Ahead of nominations for the best foreign film prize at this
year's 79th Academy Awards nine films have bee short listed for
Oscars. China's Curse of the Golden Flower didn't make the
listing.
Pedro Almodovar's Volver was, on Tuesday, named one of
the nine films. The veteran Spanish director's movie is one of the
favorites for the Oscar prize but will have to wait until the
January 23 Academy Award nomination listing to discover whether or
not it'll make the final five.
Other movies included on the shortlist released by the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are Mexico's Pan's
Labyrinth, a fantasy from Guillermo Del Toro and Germany's
The Lives of Others.
But a surprise omission was China's Curse of the Golden
Flower. Zhang Yimou's epic had been tipped to vie for the top
prize at the Oscars which will be held in Hollywood on February
25.
The nine films are:
Algeria, Days of Glory; Rachid Bouchareb,
director;
Canada, Water; Deepa; Mehta, director;
Denmark, After the Wedding; Susanne Bier, director;
France, Avenue Montaigne; Daniele Thompson,
director;
Germany, The Lives of Others; Florian Henckel von
Donnersmarck, director;
Mexico, Pan's Labyrinth; Guillermo del Toro,
director;
The Netherlands, Black Book; Paul Verhoeven,
director;
Spain, Volver; Pedro Almodovar, director;
Switzerland, Vitus; Fredi M. Murer, director
(CRI January 18, 2007)