In the super-sized build up to next year’s 89th Academy Awards – the following titles have been selected in the short-list for 2017. The winner was, of course, THE SALESMAN
TANNA – (Australia) is a tragic and magical love story whose implications ripple out into the wider world and connect us with the narrative of disappearing communities and remote tribes. Australian helmers Bentley Dean and Martin Butler make their first foray into narrative features in a stunningly cinematic film set in Vanuatu in the South Pacific and starring real villagers.
LAND OF MINE – (Denmark) Martin Zandvliet writes and directs this moving anti-war treatise that follows a young group of German POWs made the enemy of a nation, where they are forced to unearth two million landmines with their bare hands (Main image).
TONI ERDMANN – (Germany) The toast of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Maren Ade’s hilariously irreverent comedy has a bittersweet heart of gold – thanks to its tour de force performance from Austrian maverick Peter Simonischek who is made poignantly aware of the tragic legacy of his misjudged parenting skills by uptight daughter Ines (Sandra Huller).
THE SALESMAN – Asghar Farhadi tells a grim story of a couple’s deteriorating relationship in contemporary Teheran.
A MAN CALLED OVE – Swedish director Hannes Holm’s literary-based dark comedy explores themes of immigration, loneliness and old age in exploring the world of an desperate man whose life is given meaning by his new neighbours from abroad. MT
THE 89TH ACADEMY AWARDS TOOK PLACE IN LOS ANGELES IN JANUARY 2017