Oscar 2022: one of these candidates will win in the category of Best International Film

Drive My Car, The Worst Person in the World, Flee , Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom and It was the hand of God are the five representatives of world cinema who made it to the 94th ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. On Sunday 27, during the big party (which can be seen on TNT at 6 in the afternoon in Mexico, 7 at night in Colombia and Peru, and 9 at night in Argentina and Chile), one of them will receive the Oscar for Best International Film.

Arriving — respectively — from Japan, Norway, Denmark, Bhutan (country nominated for the first time) and Italy, they offer a very remarkable variety of content. We present them to you below and, in the case of two of them, we tell you where you can see them before Sunday.

Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's film won four nominations, of which two form a very special combo: in addition to aspiring to be the Best Foreign Film, it is a candidate for Best Film, something that happened a few years ago to the Mexican film Roma, by Alfonso Cuarón, which finally won in the international category.

Drive My Car (Doraibu mai ka, 2021) is an adaptation of a story by Haruki Murakami and follows the story of Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an actor and theater director, who is happily married to screenwriter Oto (Reika Kirishima). Until Oto suddenly dies, and he leaves behind a secret.

Two years later, Kafuku, still unable to overcome the loss of his wife, receives an offer to direct a play at a theater festival and heads to Hiroshima in his car. There he meets Misaki (Toko Miura), who will become his driver. While spending time together, Kafuku faces the mystery of that wife who silently pursues him. This thematic ambition contrasts with the formal simplicity of the film.

This is one of the films that can be seen before the Oscars ceremony: it is available on the MUBI platform.

The worst person in the world, by Joachim Trier (Norway)

Starring Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World recounts the life of Julie, a thirty-year-old who is in a double crisis: love and personal. The plot spans four years in the decisions of this woman who falls in love, becomes disappointed, distances herself from her father and begins to see her work as a conflict.

According to its director, Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World (Verdens verste menneske, 2021) is “the rom-com for people who hate rom-coms”. In the format of drama, it presents a contemporary reflection on the meaning of love and existence, and the abyss that separates expectations from reality.

With a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this production shot in Oslo is not yet available for streaming.

Flee, by Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Denmark)

This Danish animated documentary is perhaps the most original proposal. The director, Jonas Poher Rasmussen, interviews a gay friend who escaped Afghanistan as a teenager, after the disappearance of his father, and today lives in Copenhagen. His memories of a country invaded by the Soviet Union in the 1980s and threatened by the arrival of the Taliban in 1996, from which the family first escaped to Russia and then to Denmark, flow painfully in a mixture of animation with filmed images.

Flee (Flugt, 2021) traces Amin's life story shortly before his marriage. Since the protagonist was afraid of risking his asylum status or being attacked, he does not reveal his identity — he is called Amin — and animation is the resource that organizes his story.

Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are producers of this film, scripted by Rasmussen and Amin Nawabi; the voices are by Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, Milad Eskandari, Belal Faiz and Elaha Faiz.

Still absent from the platforms, it has won nominations in three categories: Best Animated Film, Best International Film and Best Documentary.

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, de Pawo Choyning Dorji (Bután)

This film arrives in Hollywood from Southeast Asia and succeeds in winning a nomination for the first time in the history of the Oscars Bhutan. It tells the story of Ugyen (Sherab Dorji), a young teacher who slips away from his duties to plan a dream trip to Australia, where he hopes to become a singer. As punishment, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the education system, in Lunana, a glacial village in the Himalayas.

Directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji, also in charge of the screenplay, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019), is the fragility of ideas that seem basic, such as belonging. After eight days on foot, Ugyen feels completely alienated in the village, which doesn't have the slightest comfort he was used to in the city. His first instinct is to run away: how is he going to teach without a blackboard, without books, without electricity? But the warmth with which the inhabitants receive it leads it on a path of transformation.

In his extreme poverty — all actors are, in fact, residents of Lunana, and many of them don't know Thimphu, the capital — children and their parents show him the power of respect and kindness in human relations, and hand in hand with them — in particular the amazing performance of the girl Pem Zam — he understands that home can be many things when you have spiritual strength.

It was the hand of God, by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)

Paolo Sorrentino already had the experience of winning an Oscar for La gran belleza (2013). In It was the hand of God (È estata la mano di Dio, 2021) he uses his alter ego, Fabietto Schisa, to evoke his personal story: the moment in his adolescence when tragedy changed the course of his life, and turned him into the artist he is.

With a Neapolitan humor from the 1980s — that is, politically incorrect — Sorrentino approaches the public with the simplicity of Fabietto's daily life, whose dream is for Diego Maradona to reach his team, Napoli. When the day finally arrives, his father gives him tickets for the season at San Paolo Stadium. That small gesture will have enormous significance.

“It was the hand of God, Maradona saved you,” one of the characters tells him, and that incredible idea becomes the engine of the story. “This is a very small film, which I imagined from the beginning only for my family and my people,” said Sorrentino, who nevertheless transcended with this title to Hollywood. “It's a simple film, made of memories, of adolescent experiences.”

It was the hand of God is another title that can be seen before the ceremony: it is available on Netflix.

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