Good luck to all of the amazing nominees at tonight’s #Oscars, including Canadian filmmaker, Ben Proudfoot! @bgproudfoot is nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject for the short doc, "A Concerto Is a Conversation". Canada is rooting for you, Ben! 👏 pic.twitter.com/j3sa4mo34r
— Canada (@Canada) April 25, 2021
Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot was up for Best Documentary Short for A Concerto Is a Conversation at the 93rd Academy Awards. The film lost out to Colette. The other films in the category were Do Not Split; Hunger Ward; and A Love Song for Latasha.
A Concerto Is a Conversation features Kris Bowers (co-director) and his conversations with his grandfather.
Christopher Plummer was featured in the In Memoriam section.
The Oscars ceremony was downshifted to Union Station in Los Angeles. The Canadian Screen Awards would look cool in Toronto's Union Station.
2021 Oscar nominations through the lens of Canada
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Funny Boy disqualified as Canada entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars
A follow up to our Funny Boy Canadian film review
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Our Funny Boy preview with debuts soon on CBC and Netflix
Deepa Mehta's Funny Boy is Canada's Oscars selection
Another Round from Denmark won the Best International Feature Film award. The film beat out Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina); Collective (Romania); Better Days (Hong Kong); and The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia).
The films that made the shortlist: The Mole Agent (Chile); Charlatan (Czech Republic); Two of Us (France); La Llorona (Guatemala); Sun Children (Iran); Night of the Kings (Ivory Coast); I’m No Longer Here (Mexico); Hope (Norway); Dear Comrades! (Russia); and A Sun (Taiwan).
Collective (Romania) was also nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Honeyland (North Macedonia) was the first documentary to receive a nomination in both categories in 2020. Neither film won an Oscar.
We noted that 2021 was a year for opportunity. The top 5 featured the first ever film from Tunisia and Romania to make the final cut. This was the second film from Bosnia and Herzegovina; No Man's Land won the Oscar 19 years ago. Canada's competition has risen the stakes.
Famed Danish director Thomas Vinterberg was nominated for Best Director for Another Round. You might know Vinterberg's work from The Celebration and The Commune. Chloé Zhao for Nomadland became the second female to win Best Director. Zhao and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) were the first 2 women to be nominated in the same year and only the 6th and 7th women nominated ever.
As we've noted, Night of the Kings | La Nuit des rois by Philippe Lacote is technically a Canada co-production (Cote d’Ivoire/France/Canada/Senegal). The film played at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.
Canada's entry 14 Jours, 12 Nuits was not under serious consideration even for the shortlist. These Oscars were a great opening for countries in the Best International Feature Film category but Canada didn't even come close.
The secretly Canadian film that contended for an Oscar
Canadians Oscars nomination scoreboard
Looking at how Canadians have done at the Oscars
Christopher Plummer (finally) wins his first Oscar
We don't normally focus on Canadians trying to watch American films. Canadians normally have an easy time watching American films. They dominate the local theatres and have strong marketing budgets.
The pandemic made theatre trips difficult if not impossible. Streaming helps but availability has been limited. Nomadland, the Best Picture winner this year, is a good example. Americans got access to Nomadland in the winter via Hulu on February 19. Canadians had to wait until April 9 to see the film on Star, the Canadian equivalent of Hulu. Star is relatively new so Canadians would have had to seek out Star, a part of the Disney family.
16 days before the Oscars is a short window to jump on a film. Your humble narrator can tell you the longer you have to go without seeing a hyped film, the less interested you are in that film. Deprivation affects how you feel about a film, even if you eventually get to see a film and, yes, like the film.
Nomadland won the TIFF 2020 People's Choice Award. Winning the award isn't a guarantee of Oscars success but sometimes that works out well.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina) won Best International Film at the Film Independent Spirit Awards Thursday night. They didn't have the tent in the parking lot at the beach in Santa Monica, CA.
The ceremony was reduced to 2 hours and devoted more than a half hour to television, giving awards but only for new scripted series. The independent element of films usually involves small budgets and studios. Not sure what TV qualifies as a similar analogy.
Some Canadian notes from the ceremony:
- Annie Murphy (Schitt's Creek) gave out the best male performance in a new scripted series award. Would Schitt's Creek qualify under a scripted series if it was new?
- Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was nominated for best female in a new scripted series for Never Have I Ever on Netflix, but didn't win.
- Valerie Mahaffey is American but was nominated for Best Supporting Female for French Exit, which is actually a Canadian film. Michelle Pfeiffer is nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in a leading role for the same film.
- One Night in Miami — featuring Canadian Eli Goree as Cassius Clay — won the Robert Altman Award. The award is presented to the ensemble cast, director, and casting director of a film.
- Théodore Pellerin is in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a film that received consideration.
Another Round won the BAFTA for the best Film Not In The English Language. The film won over Dear Comrades!; Les Misérables; Minari; and Quo Vadis, Aida?.
Twitter capture: @Canada
photo credit: A Concerto Is a Conversation film
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