If you asked me what films I'd like to see in the final 5 tally, I would love to see the Academy embrace non-mainstream items such as the Romanian pic from Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective) and Bong Joon-ho's Mother (South Korea)...
The October 1st deadline for all countries wanting into the Academy Award's foreign-language film category has come and gone, but you wouldn't know it since no official list of films submitted has been published.
Fish Tank, Everyone Else, Dogtooth, Police Adjective, A Prophet and White Ribbon are just a half a dozen titles among the 48 films that have a shot at being nominated among several categories for 22nd The European Film Awards.
They haven't got many world preems, today's press release only mentions Michael Hoffman's The Last Station, but that could all change – as the festival has some surprises in store for patrons (this would be a good time to bring out All Good Things into the Oscar mix) and everyone is expecting Jason Reitman to show up. We are checking his twitter status.
I'd focus on Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Kent Jones wrote an essay in this month's Film Comment about this German film and comparable on-screen relationships citing Cassavetes and Bergman examples), Zhao Dayong's three hour documentary film (Ghost Town) about how China's Cultural Revolution didn't benefit everyone and (see pic) Samuel Maoz's circa 1982 film (Lebanon) which will screen at Venice, TIFF and at the Lincoln Center - not bad for a first time filmmaker!