Oscar foreign-film slate keeps it real

LOS ANGELES: From Lebanese street children to love behind the Iron Curtain and the daily life of a Mexican housekeeper, this year’s Oscar-nominated foreign language films draw from real life and, in some cases, deeply personal experiences.

While Poland’s Cold War and Germany’s Never Look Away are set decades ago, Japan’s Shoplifters and Lebanon’s Capernaum take on contemporary themes, while Roma is the most personal film ever made by Alfonso Cuaron. Roma, based on Cuaron’s 1970s childhood in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood, is seen as the favourite to take not only the foreign language Oscar on Sunday but could make history by also winning best picture.

The film, shot entirely in black and white, is inspired by the two women who raised Cuaron: his mother and a domestic worker. “The source material were my memories, but then the film took on its own life,” Cuaron said. “Now my memories are tainted by the film.” Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski was inspired by the love life of his parents for Cold War, a dark romance between a pianist and a singer set in both Communist-led Poland and postwar France. The lead characters, Wiktor and Zula, are named after his parents.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck also looked back to World War Two for Never Look Away. The story about a struggling artist in Nazi-era Germany and then Communistruled East Germany spans four decades.