International Feature Oscar Shortlist: Armenia Marks A First, Bhutan Is Back, ‘Godland’ Surprises

Alex Ritman French TV giant Banijay has sold back the production arm of Beyond International — the Australian producer and distributor best known for “Mythbusters” it fully acquired in Dec. 2022 — to the company’s managing director, Mikael Borgland.

EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic Documentary Films is returning its Oscar-shortlisted documentary Bobi Wine: The People’s President to select cinemas over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

EXCLUSIVE: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, his producing partner at HyperObject Industries, have come aboard the Oscar-shortlisted animated short Wild Summon as executive producers. Joining them are Guy Nattiv and Jaime Ray Newman of New Native Pictures, who won an Oscar for their 2019 live-action short Skin and went on to adapt it into a feature starring Jamie Bell.

Oscar winners Emma Stone and Penelope Cruz were among the stars who honored emerging directors during a brunch event at the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

A column chronicling conversations and events on the awards circuit.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter Want to know which international features vying for Oscar gold are worth watching? Variety‘s team of critics has been on the ground at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto and other major film festivals, on the hunt for the best of the best. In December, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences unveiled its shortlist of 15 films eligible for the second round of voting in the Best International Feature Film category.

EXCLUSIVE: Meta, parent company of Facebook, is closing its Frank Gehry-designed London base, Deadline has learned. It will further reduce the number of offices it occupies in London, where the tech giant has its largest staff presence outside of the U.S.

The list of feature documentaries still in contention for the Oscars has been cut to 15 finalists, a brutal culling from a contingent of 167 qualifiers. The annual shortlist announcement leaves a handful of filmmakers celebrating, many more disappointed, and documentary watchers with much to debate. 

Siddhant Adlakha Three decades after the 1915 Armenian Genocide, an optimistic American Armenian returns to his Sovietized homeland, only be thrown in prison under flimsy circumstances. From his squalid jail cell, he peers daily into the home and inner life of one of his Armenian prison guards, and inadvertently finds the cultural connection he’d been searching for.

The festive spirit is well and truly alive this Christmas for Laura Anderson and Gary Lucy as they celebrated daughter Bonnie’s first Christmas in style with an adorable video on Christmas Eve. The former couple welcomed little Bonnie back in September and although the pair were no longer in a relationship, they continued to co-parent the youngster, with both stars being eager to share every milestone together.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the shortlists for the 2024 Oscars this morning and there were few surprises in the usually competitive International Film category. Despite some top-tier candidates, the overall field was generally considered weaker than usual.

Much to The Academy’s leadership and ABC’s delight, it’s looking to be a very “Barbie” Oscars. Greta Gerwig‘s blockbuster leads all films with five mentions on the category shortlists revealed by AMPAS today.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the shortlists in 10 categories for the upcoming 96th Oscars ceremony. Overall, Greta Gerwig’s meta-comedy “Barbie” had the most mentions with five including sound, original song for its three submissions from Billie Eilish (“What I Was Made For?”), Dua Lipa (“Dance the Night”) and Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt (“I’m Just Ken”), and original score, from the latter duo. The big miss for “Barbie” was in makeup and hairstyling, which was the category that yielded the most surprises.

Today is not just significant for the solstice and the passing of fall into winter, it also is the first bell ringing in the race for Oscar as the Academy has just announced semi-finalists in 10 categories.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Roberto Benigni, whose film “Life Is Beautiful” won three Oscars in 1999, has come out of the woodwork to support Matteo Garrone’s Golden Globe-nominated “Io Capitano,” which is Italy’s current Oscar candidate for best international feature film. The revered yet reclusive Italian actor/director, whose most recent big screen role is playing Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s hit 2019 live-action adaptation of “Pinocchio,” is clearly a big fan of “Io Capitano” (the title translates to “Me Captain”). The movie narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe.

J. Kim Murphy Filmmaker Michael Goorjian set out to create a different kind of film about Armenian nationality when developing “Amerikatsi,” the country’s submission in the international feature category for this year’s Academy Awards. Along with directing, Goorjian also stars as Charlie, an American who repatriates to Armenia after World War II — but ends up in a Soviet prison for simply wearing a tie.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Oscars shortlist voting period has closed as of 5:00 p.m. PT. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the finalists in 10 categories — documentary feature (15), documentary short subject (15), international feature (15), makeup and hairstyling (10), sound (10), original score (15), original song (15), animated short film (15), live action short film (15), and visual effects (10) — on Thursday, Dec.

The shortlist of 15 films to vie for a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination is set to be announced on December 21. In all, movies from 88 countries are eligible this year, and as we regularly see, they offer up a rich treasure trove. 

There’s a lot to take in and even more to process in American-Armenian director Michael Goorjian’s ambitious period piece: What he’s tilting at here is not beyond the realms of comedy, as Armando Iannucci proved with his 2017 jet-black satire The Death of Stalin. But tone is crucial, and Amerikatsi has a waywardness that too often undermines its intent — there’s a lot that works here and so much that doesn’t. There are moments that are sensitive, thoughtful, and really quite moving — in an elegant, silent-movie way — but the framing is so dark in its humor that many viewers may never make it to them.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences branches began voting today to determine the shortlists in 10 categories for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards. These categories, along with the number of films to be named, are: documentary feature (15), documentary short subject (10), international feature (15), makeup and hairstyling (10), sound (10), original score (15), original song (15), animated short film (10), live action short film (10), and visual effects (10). The shortlist voting period runs from Dec.