A record 93 countries submitted for consideration for the international category. The 15-film shortlist will be narrowed down to five next month before the Oscar ceremony, which was pushed back to 25 April because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Two of us, directed by Filippo Meneghetti, tells the story of two retired women, Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), who are neighbours in a small French town and have managed to hide their lesbian love affair, even from Madeleine’s daughter, played by Léa Drucker.
The film won the best first film award at the Lumières Foreign Press Awards in Paris last month.
Two of us will be competing against, among others, Another round, a Danish comedy starring former James Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen, as a teacher who embarks on a pseudo-scientific experiment with three friends, to try to be drunk all the time. Thomas Vinterberg's film won a Golden Globe nomination last week.
Four of the others on the shortlist are French co-productions, including Cote d’Ivoire’s Night of the kings, which takes place inside the notorious Maca prison, Tunisia’s The Man who sold his skin, the story of fiancés separated by the Syrian Civil war, Guatemala’s La Llorona about the trial of Guatemalan dictator Enrique Monteverde, and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Quo Vadis, Aida? a war drama.
Last year’s best foreign film Oscar went to South Korea’s Parasite, which also won best film.
