I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: The international-feature-film Oscar is the best Oscar. Year after year, this is the category that offers the most interesting movies, the hidden-gem discoveries. Something seemed amiss this year when France failed to submit the fantastic Anatomy of a Fall for the category. (France chose The Taste of Things instead, which failed to garner a nomination.) But then Anatomy of a Fall miraculously snatched a best-picture nomination, leaving five other movies to vie for the international prize, and all seemed right with the foreign-film world again. I have made a point of watching all of the 2024 nominees—and I heartily recommend you do the same. This year is an extraordinarily good field. Most of the nominees are in limited release now; one is available to stream. Here’s a quick guide, with predictions included.
The Front-Runner: The Zone of Interest
I would be shocked if Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant, years-in-the-making Holocaust film, The Zone of Interest, doesn’t take home the Oscar. No movie was more audacious or provocative this year—or more meticulously constructed. (Glazer is a UK filmmaker, but his actors speak entirely in German, making Zone eligible for this award.) Set at Auschwitz and centered on the commandant who runs the place (Christian Friedel), along with his wife (Sandra Hüller) and children, the movie is the most vivid depiction of compartmentalization I have ever seen. Unrelenting and horrific, even without a single scene of violence, Zone makes you think long and hard about what all of us are capable of.
The Zone of Interest is playing in select theaters.
The Dark Horse: Io Capitano
As wrenching and relevant a film as any you’re likely to see this year, Italy’s entry, Io Capitano, tells the story of two Senegalese teenagers making the treacherous journey from Dakar to Italy in search of a better life. Filmmaker Matteo Garrone (best known for 2008’s vivid and gritty crime drama Gomorrah) shot along the route taken by so many West African migrants—including through the forbidding Saharan desert—and his film combines an air of vérité authenticity with gorgeous flights of mournful fantasy. The true discovery of Io Capitano—which can be hard to watch but also lifts you up with its vision of resilience and survival—is its magnetic young star, newcomer Seydou Sarr, making his feature-film debut. The ending sequence, aboard a ramshackle boat crossing the Mediterranean, is a heart-stopper.
Io Capitano opens in limited theaters on February 23.
The Crowd-Pleaser: Society of the Snow
Is it weird to call a movie that depicts cannibalism a crowd-pleaser? Spain’s submission, Society of the Snow, tells the true story of the 1970 Uruguayan rugby team, whose flight crashed in the Andes. Several survived for an incredible 72 days before they were rescued—and, yes, they subsisted on the bodies of their fallen teammates, but that is not the focus of this beautifully shot, technically dazzling survival film. This is a movie, earnest and palpably respectful, about the strength of the human spirit and the love these young men had for each other. It is harrowing in places (the plane crash especially) but also engineered to leave you practically cheering by the end.
Society of the Snow is streaming on Netflix.
Unlikely to Win, But So Purely Enjoyable It Probably Should: Perfect Days
Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days is a deceptively slight film about a Japanese man who cleans Tokyo’s public toilets for a living. He is played by one of Japan’s most acclaimed actors, Kōji Yakusho, but the performance is so subtle and unassuming that it hardly seems like acting at all. Perfect Days began as a documentary project to celebrate Tokyo’s architect-designed toilets. Wenders turned that into a magical feature film about what it means to live life simply, balancing work with ample consideration for pleasure. For our middle-aged protagonist, pleasure is in music (Patti Smith, the Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, played by cassette in his van), amateur photography, a good scrub in a public bath, a drink at the end of the day—and solitude doesn’t seem to bother him. You get a sense of why when a thread of family drama emerges late in the film, but plot is not the draw of this life-affirming movie that celebrates patience, routine, and goodwill and positively floats with grace.
Perfect Days is playing in limited theaters now.
The One You’ll Want to Discuss After: The Teachers’ Lounge
This fiery conversation starter of a movie was released, too quietly, at the end of the year, and I fear not enough people have seen it. It’s riveting: a morality tale about an idealistic teacher at a German school who tries to respond to a sense of injustice being done to her students by the administration, only to see her actions backfire in spectacular fashion. The teacher is played by the excellent, committed Leonie Benesch, and though she is fixated on doing the right thing by her students—especially one who has been targeted, from a family of Turkish immigrants—she finds that any certainty of what justice means proves to be unstable ground. This is a film without political pieties, and it’s all the more humane and interesting for it.
The Teachers’ Lounge is playing in select theaters now.
