Euro 24 kicks off in Germany on 14 June, with the hosts playing Scotland. This is the 17th edition of UEFA's quadrennial championship and Cinema Paradiso marks the event with a unique film festival.
All 24 nations competing in Euro 24 have proud film traditions. As you'd expect, Cinema Paradiso has features available to rent from each contender. So, we have picked a title to represent each country and arranged them in the order of the six groups that will be played out in the opening phase of the tournament.
As goalkeeper Gábor Király was 40 when he became the oldest player in Euros' history when he played for Hungary in 2016, we have decided to make 1984 the cut-off date for eligibility. This is particularly apt, as the France vs Portugal semi-final that year is probably the most memorable game the tournament has ever witnessed.
In order to determine which titles are chosen to represent each country, we have consulted the submission lists for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Our one exception here is Albania, as none of its submitted films has been released on disc in the UK. But the other 23 pictures have been selected on the basis of availability for rental and whether the film won the Oscar, received a nomination, was shortlisted, or was simply submitted. Trust us, unlike the Euros draw, it's easier than it sounds and it makes its own sort of sense.
There are no prizes on offer, no predictions to make, and no wallcharts to keep up to date. This is just a bit of fun to give football fans a bonus competition to keep an eye on, as the films will progress through the rounds to the final on 14 July according to the draw and the results on the pitch. Moreover, Cinema Paradiso's Euro 24 Film Festival offers those who can't stand football some suggestions for alternative viewing over the next month!
GROUP A
Germany
When the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (which has been known by several other names) was introduced in 1956, Germany was a divided country. East Germany's sole Oscar nomination came for Frank Beyer's Jakob der Lügner (1975), which was remade by Peter Kassovitz as Jakob the Liar (1999). West Germany earned eight nominations over the same period, with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979) being the only winner.
Since reunification in 1990, German films have notched three wins and nine nominations. The most recent victory came for Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), which followed in the wake of Lewis Milestone's 1930 Best Picture-winning adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's pacifist novel. But, even though Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck won for The Lives of Others (2006), while also being nominated for Never Look Away (2018), Caroline Link achieved the same feat first, with Beyond Silence (1996) and Nowhere in Africa (2001). As the latter was the first Oscar winner after Die Wende, we have made it the country's representative at the Euro 24 Film Festival.
Persecuted in Nazi Germany, Jewish lawyer Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze) rents a farm in Kenya, with wife Jettel (Juliane Kshler) and daughter Regina (Lea Kurka/Karoline Eckertz) forming close bonds with cook-cum-childminder, Owour (Sidede Onyulo). Adapted from Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel and strikingly photographed by Gernot Roll, this is an intriguing insight into race and status whose lessons remain valuable.
Scotland
Films from north of the border tend to get wrapped up in the British banner when it comes to the Oscars. It also doesn't help that intrisically Scottish pictures like Trainspotting (1996), which came 10th in a BFI poll of the Best British Films of the 20th century, had to settle for a single Oscar nomination for John Hodge's adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel.
So, we've gone for The Last King of Scotland (2006), which was directed by Kevin Macdonald (the grandson of Emeric Pressburger, whose brother, Andrew, produced Trainspotting). Based on John Foden's novel by screenwriter Peter Morgan (the man behind The Crown, 2016-23), the drama charts the relationship between (fictional) Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), and Ugandan President Idi Amin (the Oscar-winning Forest Whitaker), who was a renowned Scotophile. Indeed, Foden based his version of Amin on the doomed monarch in William Shakespeare's much-filmed 'Macbeth'.
Hungary
Six decades have passed since Hungary first made an Oscar submission, when Zoltán Fabri ( Merry-Go-Round, 1955) was proposed on the first of four occasions. He was nominated for The Boys of Paul Street (1968) and Hungarians (1978), but it was to be István Szabó who would get to bring the Oscar home. Having been nominated for Confidence (1980), he won with Mephisto (1981) and landed later citations with Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988).
The latter was Hungary's last nomination of the Warsaw Pact era and the country had to wait until László Nemes's Son of Saul (2015) to be recognised again. Ildikó Enyedi's On Body and Soul (2017) has since been nominated, but Nemes won the Academy Award with the harrowing story of Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig), a member of the Sonderkommando recruited to keep Auschwitz working during the Holocaust. While removing bodies from the gas chambers in October 1944, he recognises his young son and vows to find a rabbi who can give the boy a proper burial.
Switzerland
With four national languages to take into consideration, Switzerland has a trickier time than most when it comes submitting films to the Academy Awards. The majority have been French (22), while there have been 14 in German and one in Italian. Two Swiss submissions have also been in Turkish, with Xavier Koller's Journey of Hope (1991) following Richard Dembo's Dangerous Moves (1984) in winning the Oscar.
As neither is currently on disc and we can't bring you any of Alain Tanner's five submissions, we have plumped for Éloge de l'amour (2001), by the Parisian-born, but Swiss raised Jean-Luc Godard, who had previously had Slow Motion (1980) and For Ever Mozart (1987) submitted by Switzerland. Switching between inky images on monochrome celluloid and dazzling eruptions of saturated colour on digital video, this teasing treatise on art and memory centres on an encounter between Berthe (Cécile Camp) and Edgar (Bruno Putzulu), an author embarking upon a new project about the four key stages of love.
GROUP B
Spain
A four-time winner from 21 nominations, Spain is (along with Japan) the third-most successful nation in the Best International Feature Film category behind France and Italy. Carlos Saura has been proposed on five occasions, while films by José Luis Garci have been put forward six times. He won the Oscar with Begin the Beguine (1982), a feat matched by Fernando Trueba's Belle Époque (1992) and Alejandro Armenábar's The Sea Inside (2004).
The former starred Penélope Cruz and she also featured in All About My Mother (1999), one of the seven submitted titles directed by Pedro Almodóvar, who was also nominated for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and Pain and Glory (2019), while Volver (2006) made the shortlist. Exploring what it means to be female, Almodóvar's Oscar winner follows transplant nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth) to Barcelona, as she breaks the news of the death of their 17 year-old son to Lola (Toni Cantó), a transgender woman whose friends include sex worker Agrado (Antonia San Juan) and Rosa (Cruz), an HIV+ nun who is expecting Lola's child.
Croatia
Since becoming independent, Croatia has submitted 30 films to the Academy, but has yet to snag a nomination. Branko Schmidt, Arsen Anton Ostojic, and Zrinko Ogresta have each been unsuccessful on three occasions, while Dalibor Matanic and Vinko Brešan are two-time overlookees. The latter was proposed for Marshal Tito's Spirit (1999) and Witnesses (2003), neither of which are currently available. But Cinema Paradiso can offer Brešan's The Priest's Children (2013), which becomes the Croatian entry in the Euro 24 Film Festival.
Don Fabijan (Krešimir Mikic) takes up a post on an Adriatic island and quickly discovers that it has a low birthrate. In confession, newsagent Petar (Nikša Butijer) admits to selling condoms under the counter. So, the priest persuades him to pin prick each packet, while also cajoling Marin the chemist (Dražen Kühn) into doling out vitamins instead of contraceptive pills. However, news of the ensuing baby boom soon spreads.
Italy
In addition to being the defending European champions, Italy also holds sway when it comes to Oscar victories. When the Academy only rewarded foreign films with honorary awards, Italian titles came out on top on three occasions. Subsequently, it has converted 11 of its 30 nominations, with Federico Fellini winning for La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963), and Amarcord (1974). Following honorary presentations for Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), Vittorio De Sica claimed two further statuettes for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970).
These masterpieces fall outside our Euro 24 perameters, however. Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991), and Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997) all took the award, with the latter making history by doubling up with a Best Picture victory. But we're going to go for Paolo Sorrentino's sublime winner, The Great Beauty (2013), if only because his second nominee, The Hand of God (2021), has a footballing connection, albeit via a World Cup.
Having once been a promising novelist, Roman journalist Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is now a dapper roué, whose 65th birthday party in an apartment wedged between the Colisseum and a convent is the chicest ticket in town. However, on hearing that the love of his life has died, he starts to see his city and la dolce vita from a new perspective.
Albania
Despite submitting Slogans (2001), Gjergj Xhuvani's splendid satire of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship, Albania only became a regular Oscar player in 2008. Xhuvani was proposed a second time with East, West, East (2010), but Bujar Alimani holds the record for the most submissions, thanks to Amnesty (2011), Chromium (2016), and The Delegation (2018).
As none of these is currently on disc in the UK, we shall have to make do with The Forgiveness of Blood (2011), a drama that was directed by American Joshua Marston and co-written by Albanian film-maker, Andamion Murataj. The pair won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for their screenplay, but Bujar Alimani objected to its selection for the Academy Awards and it was disqualified in favour of his own feature, Amnesty.
When his father sparks a blood feud by killing a neighbour, 17 year-old Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is confined to quarters to prevent him from becoming a target. However, he grows frustrated when his sister, Rudina (Sindi Lacej), who is three years his junior, is forced into leaving school and starts to thrive while running the family bread delivery business.
GROUP C
Slovenia
The only film directed by a Slovenian to be nominated for an Oscar is France Štiglic's The Ninth Circle (1960), the story of a Croatian family's bid to save a Jewish girl from the Nazis. This was a Yugoslavian production, but the independent Slovenia has been submitting Oscar titles since 1993. Damjan Kozole was proposed for the controversial people trafficking drama, Spare Parts (2003), while Cinema Paradiso users can also order his hard-hitting thriller, A Call Girl (aka Slovenian Girl, 2009).
However, Janez Burger has had three films submitted for the Academy Award, with Ruins (2004) and Ivan (2017) being listed either side of Silent Sonata (2010). This was a co-production with Ireland, Finland, and Sweden and boasted crew members from 18 different countries. Moreover, the magic realist story is told entirely without dialogue, as widower Leon Lucev heads into the woods during a war in an unnamed Balkan country in order to protect his two children. But they come across the camp of the Circus Fantasticus, whose performers have supernatural powers.
Denmark
The Danes have quietly gone about amassing 14 nominations from the 59 features they have submitted for the Oscars. Henning Carlsen and Erik Balling each had three films submitted, while Billie August won the category with his third submission, Pelle the Conqueror (1988). This followed directly on from the success of Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987), although a dry spell followed, during which four features made under the rules of Dogme95 failed to secure a single nomination.
Thomas Vinterberg had led the way with Festen (1998) and he returned to claim the Oscar with Another Round (2020) after having also been nominated for The Hunt (2013). But, as Denmark was the first country to submit a film by a woman (Annelise Hovmand's Be Dear to Me, 1957) and the first to receive a nomination (Astrid Henning-Jensen's Paw, 1959), we've gone for Susanne Bier's In a Better World (2010), which made her the first Danish woman to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
She had previously had Open Hearts (2002) submitted, while After the Wedding (2006) was not only nominated, but also remade by Bart Freundlich in 2019. But her triumph came with a story that Bier had co-written with Anders Thomas Jensen and which charts the familial problems of Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a doctor stationed at a Sudanese refugee camp, and Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), the wife who remains in their small-town home trying to prevent son Elias (Markus Rygaard) from getting into trouble with new classmate, Christian (William Jøhnk Juels Nielsen), who blames his mother's death on his father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen).
Serbia
Between 1959-92, six Yugoslavian films made with predominantly Serbian input were nominated for an Academy Award. None managed to win and success has proved even more elusive since Serbia started submitting in its own right in 1994. Indeed, only Srdan Golubovic's The Trap (2007) has made the shortlist, with a director of the calibre of Goran Paskaljevic having had three features proposed to no avail.
Emir Kusturica's Underground (1995) should have been given more serious consideration by AMPAS after winning the Palme d'or at Cannes. This was released under the Former Yugoslavia banner, as was Srdan Dragojevic's Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996). But, even though Kusturica made the football documentary, Maradona By Kusturica (2008), we'll plump for Dragojevic, as his 2009 Balkan War saga, St George Shoots the Dragon (2009), was a legitimately Serbian submission.
Set during the Bosnian War and inspired by a true story, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame flashes back from a Bosnian Serb unit being trapped in a tunnel that had once been a symbol of unity and progress to reveal how conflict has torn apart childhood friends, Milan (Dragan Bjelogrlic) and Halil (Nikola Pejakovic).
England
The majority of British films that have been submitted for the Best International Feature Film have been in Welsh. As Wales didn't make this year's finals, Cinema Paradiso considered such recent big-hitters in the Best Picture stakes as considered David Lean's A Passage to India (1984; 2 wins/11 nominations), John Madden's Shakespeare in Love (1998; 7/13), Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008; 8/10), Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010; 4/12), and Sam Mendes's 1917 (2019; 3/10).
However, a number of English releases have been submitted with subtitles. Frustratingly, Nihat Seven's Turkish-language drama, Little Happiness (2014); Sarmad Masud's Urdu saga, My Pure Land (2017); and Chiwetel Ejiofor's Chichewa-language Malawian drama, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019), are not available on disc. We are also awaiting release information for Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest (2023), which became the UK's first winner in this category in adapting Martin Amis's novel about the domestic arrangements of the commandant of Auschwitz. But we still have a couple of contenders to propose for the Euro 24 spot.
There's much to commend Sean Ellis's pugnacious Tagalog thriller, Metro Manila (2013). But the English pick is Babak Anvari's Under the Shadow (2016), as it's one of two Persian pictures submitted for the Oscar, alongside Hassan Nazer's dramedy, Winners (2022), which actually turns on nine year-olds Parsa Maghami and Helia Mohammadkhani finding the Academy Award for The Salesman (2017) that Donald Trump's travel ban had prevented Asghar Farhadi from collecting in person.
Anvari's horror is set in Tehran in 1988, where Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left alone to raise her daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi), after her husband is sent to fight against Iraq. However, shortly after a neighbour boy tells her about djinns and her favourite doll disappears, Dorsa falls ill.
GROUP D
Poland
No one can beat Andrzej Wajda when it comes to Polish Oscar submissions. Nine of his features have been proposed, with four being nominated by the Academy: The Promised Land (1975); Young Girls of Wilko (1979); Man of Iron (1981); and Katyn (2007). Since Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962), 13 Polish films have been nominated, with Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Pharaoh (1966), Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness (2011), and Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (2022) being available to rent from Cinema Paradiso.
Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War (2018) was also nominated. But our selection is his earlier drama, Ida (2015), which is the only Polish film to win the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Co-scripted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, this involving monochrome road movie is set in 1962 and follows 18 year-old Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), who is made to delay taking her vows to become a Catholic nun by her aunt, Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza), a hard-living state prosecutor, who has information about the identity of her adoptive niece's birth parents, who perished during the Second World War.
Netherlands
Seven Dutch films have been nominated for the Oscar, with Fons Rademakers's The Assault (1987), Marleen Gorris's Antonia's Line (1996), and Mike van Diem's Character (1998) all prevailing on the big night. Regrettably, none of this trio is available at the moment and the same goes for The Village on the River (1959), which earned Rademakers his first nomination and is one of five of his pictures submitted by the Netherlands to the Academy.
George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1988) might have been a contender, only it was disqualified for containing more French than Dutch dialogue. If this seems rather arbitrary, Mijke de Jong's Bluebird (2005) was more understandably shown the red card because it had screened on television before its theatrical release. Martin Koolhaven's Winter in Wartime (2008) and Paula van der Oest's Accused (2014) each made the shortlist, as did Paul Verhoeven's Black Book (2006), which becomes our Dutch choice, as the provocative director was also nominated for Turkish Delight (1973).
Another wartime tale, this time set in Occupied Holland in September 1944, the action follows Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), a singer who assumes the name Ellis de Vries after her Jewish family is ambushed while escaping by boat by sadistic SS-Obersturmführer Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus). Joining the Resistance, Rachel is ordered to seduce Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch). But she falls in love and only remembers her vengeful mission when she recognises Franken at Nazi headquarters.
Austria
Half of the four Austrian titles nominated for Best International Feature Film have won the Academy Award. The miss-outs were Wolfgang Glück's '38 - Vienna Before the Fall (1987) and Gotz Spielmann's Revanche (2007). Auteur Michael Hanke won for Amour (2012), which brought to a satisfactory resolution to the director's contentious and often confusing clash with the Oscar hierarchy, even though Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva's dialogue was entirely in French.
No one had complained when the German-language duo of The Seventh Continent (1989) and Benny's Video (1992) were submitted, but not selected. However, there was uproar when Hidden (2005), which had earned Haneke the Best Director prize at Cannes, was disqualified on the grounds the cast spoke French. Yet this hadn't been an issue with the 2001 submission, The Piano Teacher, which had starred Isabelle Huppert. Hanke has since been put forward again for Happy End (2017), although the vastly superior Great War allegory, The White Ribbon (2009), was overlooked completely.
Given these linguistic intricacies, Cinema Paradiso's Austrian representative will be Stefan Ruzowitzky's Oscar winner, The Counterfeiters (2007). The director had previously been proposed for The Inheritors (1998), but he landed the major prize with a fictionalised version of Operation Bernhard, which was the Nazi scheme to flood Britain with bogus pound notes at the height of the Second World War. Karl Markovics stars as Salomon Sorowitsch, a master forger who is ordered to create British and American banknotes with a small group of detainees at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Knowing success will mean eradication, Sally finds ways to sabotage the plan, both to thwart the Nazis and save himself and his co-workers.
France
As one might expect of the only country to have proposed a title for Best International Feature Film since the inception of the category in 1956, France has quite a record when it comes to the Academy Awards. In all, 38 of its 66 submissions have been nominated, with nine going on to win the Oscar in addition to René Clément's Jeux interdit (1952), which was one of three honorary victors.
Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle (1958) was the first to win the award and Cinema Paradiso users can order such successors as Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus (1959), Serge Bourguignon's Sundays and Cybele (1962), Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), and Bertrand Blier's Get Out Your Handkerchief (1978).
As none of these classics fall within our dates and Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Mustang (2015) was only nominated, and Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache The Intouchables (2011), Filippo Meneghetti's Two of Us (2019), and Alice Diop's Saint Omer (2022) only made the shortlist, the French entry in the Euro 24 Film Festival has to be Régis Wargnier's Indochine (1992). You might wonder why Justine Triet's Oscar-winning thriller, Anatomy of a Fall, failed to make the cut. But you'd need to ask the French selectors that, as they opted for Tran Anh Hung's visually ravishing, The Taste of Things (2023), reportedly because Triet has made some disparaging remarks about President Emmanuel Macron.
Set in French Indochina over the two decades from the 1930s, Wargnier's epic stars Catherine Deneuve (who would be nominated for Best Actress) as Éliane Devries, an unmarried woman who inherits her father's rubber plantation and copes with the running of the business and the rising threat of the Vietnamese independence movement while raising her adopted daughter, Camille (Linh Dan Pham). The director and Deneuve would reunite on the equally ambitious postwar Stalinist exile saga, East/West (1999).
GROUP E
Belgium
The first Belgian entry for the Academy Awards was Polish exile Jerzy Skolimowski's Le Départ (1967). Subsequently, eight features have been nominated, including Jacques Boigelot's Peace in the Fields (1970), Stijn Coninx's Daens (1992), Dominique Deruddere's Everybody's Famous! (2000), Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead (2011), and Lukas Dhont's Close (2022).
However, pride of place goes to Gérard Corbiau, who was nominated for both The Music Teacher (1988) and Farinelli (1994). The latter, a biopic of the 18th century's most famous castrate opera singer really should be on disc. But its predecessor is just as fascinating, as it combines majestic music with unsettling mystery, as Belle Époque opera singer Joachim Dallayrac (José van Dam) retires at the height of his powers and leaves the stage to his bitter rival, Prince Scotti (Patrick Bauchau), in order to coach his protégée, Sophie Maurier (Anne Roussel).
Slovakia
Slovakia was still a component part of Czechoslovakia when the country enjoyed its first Oscar triumph. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos in the Slovak language, The Shop on the High Street (1966) was the first Czechoslovak title to be nominated for Best International Feature Film and it took the prize. Prior to the Velvet Revolution, Zoro Zahon's The Assistant (1982) and Juraj Jakubisko's The Millennial Bee (1983) were also recognised.
Since the first solo submission in 1993, Matej Minác succeeded in scoring consecutive submissions with All My Loved Ones (1999) and Landscape (2000), although Cinema Paradiso can only offer his 2011 documentary, Nicky's Family. Peter Bebjak also doubled up with The Line (2017) and The Auschwitz Escape (2020).
But the standout figure in recent Slovak cinema is Martin Šulík, who has a record seven submissions to his credit. Thanks to the splendid Second Run label, Cinema Paradiso users can rent Tenderness (1992), which we shall make the Slovak entry, even though it wasn't submitted for the Academy Awards.
Forced to leave his country home after a contretemps with his father, disaffected youth Šimon (Géza Benkõ) arrives in a city in the midst of political turmoil. He's adopted by a dysfunctional couple, Maria (Maria Pakulnis) and Viktor (György Cserhalmi), who alternately dote on and toy with the boy. However, he comes to question Viktor's intentions, when he tries to match him with a deaf single mother, Marta (Iva Bittová).
Romania
Given the acclaim showered on New Wavers like Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu, Radu Mihaileanu, Cristian Mungiu, Radu Jude, and Calin Peter Netzer, it's surprising that Romanian cinema hasn't had more success at the Academy Awards. Best known for his work during the Communist era, Sergiu Nicolaescu had five films submitted. But none was nominated, a fate shared with Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005), Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Poremboiu's Police, Adjective (2009), and Netzer's Child's Pose (2013).
Mungiu made the shortlist with Beyond the Hills (2012). But Porumboiu's The Whistlers (2019) failed to be chosen, leaving Alexander Nanau's Collective (2019) as the only Romanian film to garner Oscar nominations, as it was cited in both the Best International Feature Film and Best Feature Documentary categories.
When a fire at Bucharest's Colectiv club leaves 27 dead and 180 injured, journalist Catalin Tolontan persuades The Gazette to investigate the quality of care in the city's hospitals. His findings prompt an inquiry into Hexi Pharma and the resignation of the Minister of Health. But, while successor Vlad Voiculescu vows to pass reforms, he discovers that the entire medical infrastructure is riddled with corruption.
Ukraine
A documentary is the only Ukrainian film to have gone beyond the submission stage, as Mstyslav Chernov's 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) made the Academy's shortlist earlier this year. There is much to admire about Nariman Aliev's submission, Homeward (2019), as it follows the efforts of Crimean Tartar Akhtem Seitablayev to give his estranged son a traditional burial in spite of the fact that he had married an Orthodox believer. But Ukraine's selection has to be Sergey Loznitsa's Donbass (2018), if only because Cinema Paradiso users can also rent the same director's In the Fog (2012), Maidan (2014), and A Gentle Creature (2017).
Earning Loznitsa the Best Director prize at Cannes's Un Certain Regard sidebar, the film links fact-based episodes from the conflict between the Kyiv regime and the citizens of the Russian-backed Donetsk region. Whether focussing on medics facing a supply shortage, war correspondents coming across clandestine Russian forces, a wedding party becoming increasingly raucous, or a mob determined to send a message by lynching a Ukrainian volunteer, this makes for grim, but gripping viewing.
GROUP F
Turkey
Coming late to the Oscars, Turkey has only been regularly submitting features since 1989. Yet, despite proposing 28 pictures, the country has yet to secure a nomination. It might have had one if Yilmaz Güney had not been compelled to flee to Switzerland with the negative of Yol (1982), which had been directed by assistant Serif Gören from Güney's script while he was in prison. The same goes with Xavier Holler's aforementioned Journey of Hope.
Tunç Basaran and Yavuz Turgul have each had two films proposed, while Semih Kaplanoglu has had three put forward, including Honey (2010). But no one can match Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who has been chosen for Uzak (aka Distant, 2003), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), Winter Sleep (2014), The Wild Pear Tree (2018), and About Dry Grasses (2023). Moreover, he became the only Turkish-based director to make the shortlist with Three Monkeys (2008).
In a simmering story in which secrets and lies become ever-more entangling, Yavuz Bingöl tries to improve the lot of his kitchen assistant wife, Hatice Aslan, and their son when he agrees to take the blame for a traffic accident for political boss, Ercan Kesal. However, the situation slides out of control when Aslan approaches Kesal for an advance and they embark upon an affair.
Georgia
Georgia is the only country making its debut at Euro 24, keeping up the tournament's record of having at least one new qualifier since it started in 1960. It bodes well that Georgia scored a nomination with its first submission, Nana Jorjadze's A Chief in Love (1991). However, only Giorgi Ovashvili's Corn Island (2014) has as much as made the shortlist since, with neither Aleksandre Koberidze's What Do We See When We Look At the Sky? (2021) nor Elene Naveriani's equally wonderful Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (2023) even being deemed worthy of submission.
In the Communist era, Tengiz Abuladze's bleak satire, Repentance (1984), had gotten to represent the Soviet Union, while the exiled Otar Iosseliani had critics purring with gentle comedies like Monday Morning (2002) and Gardens in Autumn (2006), which were both made in France. But Cinema Paradiso does have a Georgian submission on its books, Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß's In Bloom (2013), which shouldn't be confused with Chris Michael Birkmeier's gay romcom of the same name that just happened to be released that same year.
The action takes place in 1982, during the civil war that followed Georgia's split from the USSR. Tbilisi teenagers, Eka (Lika Babluani) and Natia (Mariam Bokeria), have always been inseparable. But Natia has attracted the attention of two boys, Lado (Data Zakareishvili) and Kote (Zurab Gogaladze). When the former leaves the city to stay with relatives, he entrusts Natia with a gun containing a single bullet. But it does her no good when she's abducted and forced into marriage.
Portugal
Despite submitting 40 features to the Academy, Portugal has yet to receive a single nomination in the Best International Feature Film category. However, João Gonzalez's Ice Merchants (2022) was recognised for Best Animated Short Film, so maybe the tide is turning?
Fine film-makers have fallen short, including Pedro Costa, whose Blood (aka O Sangue, 1989) and Vitalina Varela (2019) were submitted three decades apart. João Botelho and Marco Martins have also been put forward twice, as has Miguel Gomes, whose Our Beloved Month of August (2008) and Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One (2015) are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. As is Valeria Sarmiento's submission, Wellington (2012), a stylised biopic starring John Malkovich that was developed by Sarmiento's late husband, the great Chilean director Raúl Ruiz.
But one fifth of all Portuguese submissions have been made by Manoel de Oliveira, who was still directing when he died at the age of 106 in 2015. Although available to rent, I'm Going Home (2001) and Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl (2009) were overlooked. But De Oliveira's last submitted film, Belle Toujours (2006), is also on offer, even though the dialogue for this sequel to Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967) is entirely in French. Bulle Ogier takes over the role of Séverine from Catherine Deneuve, but Michel Piccoli returns as Henri Husson, the man who had blackmailed her years before over her secret life as a Parisian prostitute.
Czech Republic
As we have already seen, Czechoslovakia had Oscar success with a Slovak film. However, Czech director Jirí Menzel won the same award with another wartime tale, Closely Observed Trains (1966). In all, 23 features were submitted between 1964-93, since when the Czech Republic has submitted its own titles.
Veteran animator Jan Švankmajer was proposed to the Academy for Faust (1994) and Lunacy (2006), while Menzel was recognised for I Served the King of England (2006) and The Don Juans (2013). However, the millennium saw the submission list taken over by new wavers like Jan Hrebejk, who followed an Oscar nomination for Divided We Fall (2000) with submissions for Up and Down (2004) and Kawasaki's Rose (2010).
Cinema Paradiso users can also rent Hrebejk's unsubmitted comedy, Pupendo (2003). But the fates have decreed that Bohdan Sláma's submitted trio of Wild Bees (2002), Something Like Happiness (2005), and Ice Mother (2017) are as unavailable as Ondrej Trojan's Želary (2003) and Zátopek (2021) and Petr Zelenka's The Karamazovs (2008) and Lost in Munich (2015), which is a shame as they are all fine films, with the latter being an offbeat classic about the 1938 Munich Conference.
We can bring you Václav Marhoul's The Painted Bird (2019) and FAMU-trained Polish stalwart Agnieszka Holland's Charlatan (2020), which were shortlisted in consecutive years. But the sole feature from the Czech Republic to win the Academy Award is Jan Sverák's Kolya (1996), although he couldn't repeat the trick with Dark Blue World (2001). Starring the director's father, Zdenek Sverák (who also wrote the script), the former examines the impact on cash-strapped Prague cellist, František Louka, of being left to raise a small boy, Kolya (Andrey Khalimon), after his Russian mother does a bunk after contracting a sham marriage to secure residency papers. As the age-gap couple, who don't even share a language, start to get to know each other, however, this slow-burning charmer begins to exude its magic.
Mentioned films
