Danish Cinema Receives Two Oscar Nominations
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that two Danish films will be on the red carpet for the 2016 Oscars on 28th February. Tobias Lindholm’s A War is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, while Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence is nominated in the category of Best Documentary Feature.
“Congratulations to the teams behind these two impressive films. Today’s nominations of ‘A War’ and ‘The Look of Silence’ confirm that films made in Denmark have quality and tell stories that engage not only ourselves, but also audiences around the world,” says Henrik Bo Nielsen, CEO of the Danish Film Institute.
A War
A War (Krigen) was recently nominated for ten Robert Prisen awards, and has been praised by critics, naming it a “bruising two hours of you-are-there cinema” (Indiewire) and a “rigorous, engrossing anatomy of a suspected war crime” (Variety), among other accolades.
The film highlights the consequences of war on all its participants – from soldiers and civilians to family and loved ones. We follow company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men who are stationed in an Afghan province. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for him – and his family back home.
The nominees for Best Foreign Language Film are: Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), Mustang (France), Son of Saul (Hungary), Theeb (Jordan), and A War (Denmark).
The Look of Silence
The Look Of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s companion piece to The Act of Killing won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival in 2014, and now with over 40 international awards under its belt (including IDA Best Feature last night) it is one of five nominees for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Oscars.
The film takes us once again to the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66, this time as seen through the eyes of a young optometrist, Adi Rukun, who seeks out the men who killed his brother. Whilst testing their eyesight, he confronts them about their actions.
The nominees for Best Documentary Feature are: Amy (Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees), Cartel Land (Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin), The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen), What Happened Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes), and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor).