Though most Oscar contenders don't debut until the later this year, last year's Cannes Film Festival launched several films that became awards-season players, including Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman and Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War. With this year's edition of Cannes all sewn up last weekend, which films should Oscar-watchers look out for?
Which Cannes films will factor into the Oscar race?
Also keep an eye on Antonio Banderas, who is subtle and moving in Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory, in which he plays a thinly veiled stand-in for his director. Banderas has never been nominated for an Oscar, but he charmed the Cannes press with funny and emotional stories about his long career, and if the 58-year-old actor hits the awards circuit with that same gusto, he'll be irresistible.
Pain and Glory ought to be a strong contender for the international-film category (previously known as best foreign language film), too, if Spain submits it. The same goes for the Senegalese drama Atlantics, which Netflix acquired. Its director, Mati Diop, was the first black female director in Cannes competition and she took the festival's second-place prize. Other laurelled films like Brazil's Bacurau and France's lesbian love story Portrait of a Lady on Fire deserve consideration, too.
What of Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, which Fox Searchlight picked up for an eye-popping price of around $14 million? Malick hasn't made a significant dent in Oscar season since his 2011 film, The Tree of Life, and reactions to his latest were somewhat split: Some pundits thought it was a whole lot of metaphysical woo-woo, while others found Malick to be back on track with the story of an Austrian farmer who refuses to fight for the Nazis. The size of the sale indicates that Fox Searchlight will push this one hard, but without big stars or a director willing to do press, can A Hidden Life go the distance?
And then there's the winner of the Palme d'Or, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. No Korean film has been nominated for the international Oscar before, but Parasite is so strong it could even blow past that category to factor into directing and screenplay races, if upstart distributor Neon plays its cards right. An urgent story of class struggle told in the most sensationally entertaining way, Parasite is Bong at his best, and the academy must take note.
Written by: Kyle Buchanan
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