Movies

Festival Winners, Oscar Hopefuls Vie for BIFA International Award (EXCLUSIVE)

The long list for the coveted best international picture prize at the British Independent Film Awards includes Cannes Palme d’Or and London Film Festival winners, as well as pictures from Pedro Almodovar, Robert Eggers and Noah Baumbach. Multiple titles that have been submitted to compete for the Oscar for best international feature film are also in the mix.

The long list for the Best International Independent Film at the BIFAs, shared exclusively with Variety, includes Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winning “Parasite,” and Alejandro Landes’ child soldier saga “Monos,” which was named best picture at the London Film Festival.

Other titles that launched at Cannes and on the BIFA long list include Nora Fingscheidt’s “System Crasher” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory,” which are Germany’s and Spain’s Oscar entries, respectively. Other national entries to the Oscars that are also on the BIFA long list include Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” (Senegal), Sameh Zoabi’s “Tel Aviv on Fire” (Luxembourg), and Lila Aviles’ “The Chambermaid” (Mexico).

Baumbach’s “Marriage Story,” which premiered in Venice and will be on Netflix, also appears on the long list. Another Netflix-bound picture in the selection is Cannes title “I Lost My Body,” Jeremy Clapin’s feature about a disembodied hand.

BIFA will whittle the long list down to five titles after another round of voting. The international gong is one of several on which all members of the organization can vote. BIFA has also pioneered an unconscious-bias training program for its members, which is now rolling out to the wider industry.

The BIFA nominations will be announced at the end of this month. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony, in London, on Dec. 1.

The full long list for Best International Independent Film:

“Apollo 11” (Todd Douglas Miller)

“Ash Is Purest White” (Jia Zhang-Ke)

“Atlantics” (Mati Diop)

“The Chambermaid” (Lila Aviles)

“Eighth Grade” (Bo Burnham)

“The Farewell” (Lulu Wang)

“I Lost My Body” (Jeremy Clapin)

“The Lighthouse” (Robert Eggers)

“Marriage Story” (Noah Baumbach)

“Monos” (Alejandro Landes)

“Pain and Glory” (Pedro Almodovar)

Parasite” (Bong Joon-ho)

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (Celine Sciamma)

“So Long, My Son” (Wang Xiaoshuai)

“System Crasher” (Nora Fingscheidt)

“Tel Aviv on Fire” (Sameh Zoabi)

“Woman at War” (Benedikt Erlingsson)

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