List of submissions to the 61st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film

This is a list of submissions to the 61st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was created in 1956 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honour non-English-speaking films produced outside the United States. The award is handed out annually, and is accepted by the winning film's director, although it is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. Countries are invited by the Academy to submit their best films for competition according to strict rules, with only one film being accepted from each country.

For the 61st Academy Awards, thirty-one films were submitted in the category Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Soviet film, Commissar, was filmed in 1967, but was banned for twenty years. The five nominated films came from Belgium, Hungary, India, Spain and Denmark.

Denmark won the award for the second time in a row with Pelle the Conqueror by Bille August, which was also nominated for Best Actor (Max von Sydow).

Submissions Submitting country Film title used in nomination Original title Language(s) Director(s) Result The Debt La deuda interna Spanish Miguel Pereira Undiscovered Country Das Weite Land German Luc Bondy The Music Teacher Le Maître de musique French Gérard Corbiau The Story of Fausta Romance da Empregada Brazilian Portuguese Bruno Barreto Where Do We Go? За къде пътувате? Bulgarian Rangel Vulchanov The Revolving Doors Les portes tournantes French Francis Mankiewicz Red Sorghum 红高粱 Mandarin Zhang Yimou Letters from the Park Cartas del parque Spanish Tomás Gutiérrez Alea Pelle the Conqueror Pelle erobreren Scanian, Danish, Swedish Bille August One Way Ticket Un Pasaje de Ida Spanish Agliberto Meléndez The Reader La Lectrice French Michel Deville Yasemin German Hark Bohm In the Shadow of Fear Στη σκιά του τρόμου Greek Giorgos Karypidis Hanussen Hungarian, German István Szabó In the Shadow of the Raven Í skugga hrafnsins Icelandic, German Hrafn Gunnlaugsson Salaam Bombay! सलाम बॉम्बे Hindi Mira Nair The Summer of Aviya הקיץ של אביה Hebrew, Yiddish Eli Cohen The Legend of the Holy Drinker La Leggenda del santo bevitore Italian Ermanno Olmi Hope and Pain ダウンタウン・ヒーローズ Japanese Yoji Yamada The Last Tunnel El último túnel Spanish, Rarámuri Servando González The Vanishing Spoorloos Dutch, French, English George Sluizer The Ghost of War El espectro de la guerra Spanish Ramiro Lacayo-Deshon The Ice Palace Is-slottet Norwegian Per Blom The Mouth of the Wolf La boca del lobo Spanish Francisco José Lombardi A Short Film About Love Krótki film o milosci Polish Krzysztof Kieślowski Hard Times Tempos Difíceis Portuguese João Botelho Tango Bar Spanish Marcos Zurinaga Commissar Комиссар RussianAleksandr Askoldov Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios Spanish Pedro Almodóvar La Méridienne French Jean-François Amiguet My Mother's Teahouse 春秋茶室 Mandarin Chen Kunhou My Uncle's Legacy Život sa stricem Serbo-Croatian Krsto Papić

Notes

The Dutch submission, the thriller The Vanishing, was disqualified by the Oscar committee. AMPAS complained that less than 50% of the dialogue in the film was in Dutch, and that French was the majority language. Although the film was made by the Netherlands with a French-Dutch filmmaker and a mixed cast (mostly Dutch), AMPAS deemed that the film was not suitable to represent the Netherlands. The Netherlands declined to send another film, leaving them unrepresented for the first time since 1972.

References