The Americas region last achieved an Oscar nomination two years ago, and most recently won in 2019. Jeremy Kay sees cause for optimism this year — with Brazil leading the charge.
Predicting the international feature film Oscar shortlist is no easy task. Much clearer is the fact that in general films from the Americas have struggled in recent years to make deep forays into awards season.
However, there are high hopes that several of this year’s selections could prosper after making waves on the festival circuit. Prior Oscar nominee and Bafta winner Walter Salles represents Brazil with I’m Still Here, Mexican entry Sujo hails from the formidable duo of Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, and renowned documentarian Maite Alberdi is in contention with her narrative debut In Her Place.
The region is no stranger to portrayals of hardship on screen, and crime-related stories are writ large across a roster that also brings true-life dramas and a trio of documentaries, punctuated by two distinctively whimsical tales.
Brazilian maestro Salles, who was nominated for the Oscar and won the Bafta for film not in the English language with Central Station in 1999, is back in the fray with his fourth Oscar submission. Adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir about his family (who are friends of Salles), I’m Still Here premiered in Venice and won the Golden Osella screenplay award for Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser.
Fernanda Torres has earned wide acclaim for playing a wife and mother who must reinvent herself and care for her family after her husband, former congressman Rubens Paiva, disappears under Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971. Sony Pictures Classics releases in the US on November 20.
Salles also won the Bafta for The Motorcycle Diaries in 2005 and was nominated for Behind The Sun in 2002. Brazil has submitted more than 50 times to Oscar and garnered four nominations.
Argentina was the most recent Americas nation to secure a nomination in the Oscar category — for Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985 in 2023. Kill The Jockey is the country’s 50th submission and marks rising star Luis Ortega’s follow-up to his 2018 Cannes Un Certain Regard crime drama The Angel. The capricious tale of identity and reinvention stars Nahuel Perez Biscayart as a gifted jockey who falls foul of a mobster, and also stars Ursula Corbero from Money Heist. Kill The Jockey premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the San Sebastian Horizons Award.
Argentina is historically the most successful country in the Americas with two Oscars: for Luis Puenzo’s The Official Story in 1986, and Juan Jose Campanella’s The Secret In Their Eyes in 2010. There have been six other nominations including Damian Szifron’s breakout Wild Tales in 2015.
Mexico — the last country from the region to win the Oscar with Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma in 2019 — is represented this year by Sujo, in which the son of a slain cartel hitman grows up in hiding and tries to avoid following in his father’s footsteps. Juan Jesus Varela stars in the drama, which won Sundance’s world cinema dramatic competition prize. The Forge will release in North America on November 29, while Alpha Violet represents international sales.
Since the success of Roma, Mexican films have made it onto the Oscar shortlist of 15 titles in each of the last four years, with Lila Aviles’ Totem the only film from the Americas region to do so last year.
Northern whimsy
Matthew Rankin’s unapologetically absurdist Universal Language flies the flag for Canada and enters awards season with accolades in the form of Toronto’s best Canadian discovery award and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight audience award. Metafilms’ caper transposes Iran to Winnipeg and intertwines stories of children discovering frozen loot, a tour guide with an itinerary of underwhelming attractions, and a man visiting his estranged grandmother. Oscilloscope distributes in the US.
Canada is historically a powerhouse, with seven Oscar nominations, most recently for Kim Nguyen’s War Witch in 2013. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions remains the only Canadian film to win the category, in 2004.
Colombian filmmakers are keen to translate a vibrant production sector into awards recognition. The country has previously submitted 32 times and earned only one nomination — for Ciro Guerra’s Embrace Of The Serpent in 2016. Cristina Gallego and Guerra’s Birds Of Passage made the shortlist of nine (as it was at the time) in 2019. This year’s contender is Felipe Holguin’s feelgood drama and Toronto premiere La Suprema, in which a headstrong Afro-Colombian girl coaxes villagers in her remote community to find a television set to watch her uncle contest a championship boxing match in Venezuela.
From Chile comes In Her Place, Alberdi’s debut narrative feature that premiered in San Sebastian and is based on the true story of a celebrated writer who goes on trial after she is accused of killing her lover. Netflix holds rights, and Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain’s Fabula produced.
Alberdi has an impressive Oscars pedigree. Earlier this year The Eternal Memory earned a documentary feature nomination three years after The Mole Agent garnered the same accolade while landing a slot on the international feature film shortlist. Chile won the foreign-language Oscar in 2018 with Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman.
Jayro Bustamante’s Rita will fly the flag for Guatemala. The filmmaker’s follow-up to his horror La Llorona received its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal and brings the filmmaker’s signature blend of genre and fierce social conscience. Based on the deadly Guatemalan orphanage fire that claimed the lives of 41 girls in 2017, the story centres on the titular 13-year-old who flees a neglectful household and is placed in an oppressive state-run orphanage, where together they plan to escape and expose the orphanage’s abuses of power. La Llorona was the Guatemalan submission and made the Oscar shortlist for the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021.
Peruvian submission Yana-Wara from Oscar Catacora and Tito Catacora is tinged with sadness. Oscar died during production, whereupon his uncle Tito took over directing duties. The film tells of a murder trial that uncovers abuse, and features entirely non-professional actors. Quechua Films handles sales on the film, which holds cultural significance as it is in the Indigenous Aymara language. Oscar’s Eternity was submitted in 2018 and was the first Peruvian film to be made entirely in Aymara. Peru’s sole nomination was in 2010 for The Milk Of Sorrow.
Costa Rica has become a source of festival darlings and is represented this year by Berlin Panorama audience award winner Memories Of A Burning Body from Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, whose debut The Awakening Of The Ants was submitted for Costa Rica in 2020. The new film, about three elderly women who rediscover their bodies and sexuality through the lens of one 65-year-old woman, won a handful of prizes at Ventana Sur. Costa Rica has yet to secure a nomination after 12 prior submissions.
Several other countries seek their first nomination. Panama made it onto the shortlist in 2022 with Abner Benaim’s Plaza Catedral, and this year the selection committee has placed its hopes on the thriller Wake Up Mom from Arianne Benedetti, the country’s vice minister of culture and former film commissioner. Benedetti stars alongside her real-life daughter Mila Romedetti and Erick Elias in the story of a woman who pulls out all the stops when her girl goes missing after an accident. Panama has submitted 10 times before.
Bolivia is represented by Rodrigo ‘Gory’ Patiño’s social drama Own Hand, about the lynching of six people wrongly accused of theft. The country has had 13 of its previous submissions accepted, including Patiño’s The Goalkeeper for the 2019 awards.
From the Dominican Republic comes Leticia Tonos’s Rotterdam premiere Aire, Just Breathe, the filmmaker’s fourth Oscar submission and the country’s 17th. Paz Vega stars in the sci-fi as a scientist who impregnates herself by artificial intelligence in a bid to save humanity.
Leading contemporary Ecuadorian filmmaker Sebastian Cordero directed Behind The Mist, a documentary about Ivan Vallejo, the first Ecuadorian to climb Mount Everest in 1999. Cordero’s Ratas, Ratones, Raterosplayed Venice and Toronto in 1999, while Cronicas premiered on the Croisette in 2004. This is Ecuador’s 12th submission.
Representing Paraguay is Sebastian Peña Escobar’s The Last, a documentary about ecological threats to the Gran Chaco, one of the most deforested regions on the planet. The film premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2023.
Uruguay’s assisted-dying doc The Door Is There from Juan Ponce de Leon and Facundo Ponce de Leon premiered in San Sebastian’s Made In Spain section in 2023. Adolfo Aristarain’s A Place In The World fleetingly held an Oscar nomination for Uruguay in 1993 before it was rescinded when the production was discovered to be almost entirely Argentinian.
Venezuela’s entry Back To Life by Luis Carlos and Alfredo Hueck — whose 2013 Papita, Maní, Tostón remains the country’s biggest hit — is a 1990s-set tale about a returning son who receives a life-changing diagnosis. Rounding out the region’s titles is Haiti’s third Oscar submission, Kidnapping Inc. from Bruno Mourral, which tells of two hapless kidnappers. It premiered at Sundance and earned Fantasia’s best Quebec feature award alongside a special mention in the festival’s best first feature category.
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