Oscar Submissions 2021- The Films from Asia and the Pacific (18 films)

 Reportedly the final list is coming out in a few hours and I simply don't have time to write about the Asian films (I've only seen half of them)......Hopefully the list will be delayed a day or two and I'll be able to fill this entry out.....But just in case I don't, here are my rankings.....Last year, the Asia-Pacific group only got one slot (South Korea, who obviously won)....I'm really hoping that Mongolia or Pakistan can surprise! 

1. TAIWAN- "A Sun"

2. MONGOLIA- "Veins of the World"

3. HONG KONG- "Better Days"

4. PAKISTAN- "Circus of Life"

5. JAPAN- "True Mothers"

6. INDIA- "Jallikattu"

7. SINGAPORE- "Wet Season"

8. BHUTAN- "Lunana, A Yak in the Classroom"

9. UZBEKISTAN- "2000 Songs of Farida"

10. SOUTH KOREA- "The Man Standing Next"

11. CHINA- "Leap"

12. KAZAKHSTAN- "The Crying Steppe"

13. THAILAND- "Happy Old Year"

14. KYRGYZSTAN- "Running to the Sky"

15. VIETNAM- "Dreamy Eyes"

16. INDONESIA- "Impetigore"

17. BANGLADESH- "Sincerely Yours, Dhaka"

18. CAMBODIA- "Fathers"

19. MALAYSIA- "Roh"

20. PHILIPPINES- "Mindanao" 

Now the statistics:

Genres: 15 dramas, 2 horror films, 1 anthology of shorts.

Number of countries who have participated in the past: 28

Number of countries entering films this year: 20....but two were disqualified.

Number of debuts: Zero.

Who Didn’t Submit?: Afghanistan, Australia, Nepal and New Zealand...plus Fiji and Laos (who have only sent films once) and Sri Lanka and Tajikistan (who havent' send films in over ten years. 

Nepal announced a shortlist of two films ("Aama" and "Sarita"), so I'm not sure why they didn't send one of them. Australia didn't have an obvious candidate and that meant they were absent for the first time since 2011.  Afghanistan has some sort of problem with the recognition of its committee....and I was also surprise that Laos didn't send Buddhist sci-fi drama "The Long Walk".  

Already Seen: I saw 10 of the 20 films.....The best was "Circus of Life" from Pakistan (A), followed by the multi-strand mystery "True Mothers" from Japan (B+). The rest: Kyrgyzstan, Singapore (B+), Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Thailand (B), Indonesia (B-) and Malaysia (C+)

Film I'm most looking forward to seeing: "Lunana", the disqualified entry from tiny Bhutan. 

Number of Female Directors: Only 3....the lowest percentage of any region. Byambasuren Davaa (Mongolia), Naomi Kawase (Japan) and Marina Kunarova, the first woman ever to represent Kazakhstan. 

Oldest and Youngest Directors: The oldest is Brillante Mendoza, 60 (Philippines). The youngest is probably one of the 11 Bangladeshi directors....but the youngest I know of are Anthony Chen (Singapore), Pawo Choyning Dorji (Bhutan) and Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Thailand), who were all born in 1984. 

Number of Languages Represented: We have four mostly in Mandarin, plus one each in Bengali, Dzongkha, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Kyrgyz, Malay, Malayalam, Mongolian, Thai, Urdu, Uzbek and Vietnamese. The films from Kazakhstan and Singapore (as usual) are multi-lingual. 

Number of countries with a realistic chance at making the shortlist: Not many....5 or 6?

Most Likely to Get Their First Nomination: Mongolia

Buzziest films: "A Sun" and "Impetigore"

Controversies and Changes: Sadly, films from 2 of Asia's smallest film industries were disqualified....Bhutan was so proud to send their first nominee since 1999....but AMPAS said that the selection by the Bhutanese Ministry of Culture was not done by an officially sanctioned Oscar committee. Uzbekistan selected "2000 Songs of Farida" (Busan). According to the producers, the film was sent on time but AMPAS asked the Uzbek committee for a different format. They learned about this the day of the deadline and didn't have time to send it due to slow Internet feeds. The Uzbek Oscar committee has claimed on their Facebook page that they got a special dispensation to send the film next year....No idea if that's accurate or not. 

Pakistan's film would not have qualified in previous years because its domestic release was cancelled not due to coronavirus but due to protests by a violent fundamentalist group (spookily mirroring events in the film). 

Oscar History:  Mongolia's nominated director- Byambasuren Davaa- won a Best Documentary Oscar nomination for "Tears of the Weeping Camel" (after failing to get a Foreign Film nod). She has been selected to represent Mongolia in this category twice.

A few directors have been in the race once before- Mirlan Abdykalykov ("Heavenly Nomadic", 2015), Peter Chan ("Perhaps Love", 2005), Anthony Chen ("Ilo Ilo", 2013), Brillante Mendoza ("Ma Rosa", 2016), Victor Vu ("Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass", 2016)

Most Notable Omissions:   Most people were predicting that India would select Venice drama "The Disciple" and that China would select big-budget blockbuster "The 800".....but these two countries are notoriously unpredictable and they selected two different (and possibly better?) films. 

Two Oscar nominees also had new films that weren't selected- "Irradiated" (Cambodia) and "Under the Light" (China)...but neither was very high-profile....

Also absent: "Made in Bangladesh" (Bangladesh's official runner-up), "37 Seconds" (Japan), "Yellow Cat" (Kazakhstan), "The Road to Eden" (Kyrgyzstan), "Black Milk" (Mongolia), "Nemesis" (Thailand) and "Rom" (Vietnam)

Familiar Faces: Two international superstars- Byung-hun Lee (South Korea) and Gong Li (China) de-glam for their latest roles. Runner-up: Judy Ann Santos is a pretty big star in her native Philippines. 

Last year's race:   I saw most of last year's submissions, the best of which was Oscar winner "Parasite" (duh!) from South Korea (A). The rest: Mongolia (A), Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan (A-), Australia (B+), Vietnam (B), China, Japan, Nepal (B-), Bangladesh, Uzbekistan (C+), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand (C), India (C-) Malaysia and Singapore (D).