Palm Springs Film Fest to feature 42 Foreign Oscar hopefuls

PanARMENIAN.Net - The 24th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which runs from Jan 3-14, will shine its klieg light on the upcoming race for the best foreign-language film Oscar by screening 42 of the 71 films that have been submitted for Academy Awards consideration. It also will introduce a new program called Nordic Light, which will highlight films from Scandinavia. And it has scheduled ten features in its Modern Masters section, The Hollywood Reporter said.

“This year's lineup features celebrated veteran auteurs sharing the stage with films by a large number of audacious new talents – indeed, almost a third of this year’s PSIFF filmmakers are marking their feature film debut,” festival director Darryl Macdonald said. “Nowhere is this trend more apparent than in our Nordic Light section, with well-established filmmakers Lasse Hallström, Thomas Vinterberg and Baltasar Kormákurpresenting striking new work alongside promising debut directors like Mikael Marcimain (Call Girl), Gabriela Pichler (Eat Sleep Die) and Dag Johan Haugerud (I Belong). This special section vividly reflects the ongoing emergence of a newly revitalized Scandinavian cultural aesthetic.”

The Awards Buzz section devoted to the Oscar submission will include such features as Michael Haneke’s Amour, Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair, Kim Nguyen’s War Witch and Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s Intouchables.