Antigone will be Canada's selection for the Oscars
Quebec filmmaker Sophie Deraspe’s new movie Antigone will represent Canada at the next Academy Awards in the newly renamed Best International Feature Film category. It was previously called Best Foreign- Language Film, but in April the Academy decided that “foreign” sounded too negative. The rules — a non-english- language film originating outside the U. S. — remain the same.
Antigone, which had its world première at TIFF last month, is a loose adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy from the 5th century BC. It tells the story of teenaged Antigone (Nahéma Ricci), the glue holding her immigrant family together in a working- class neighbourhood in Montreal. But a tragic confrontation between the police and her brother sets her on a path of personal justice.
Antigone will open in Quebec on Nov. 6, but it remains to be seen if the film will play widely in the rest of Canada. Neither last year’s Oscar submission, Family First ( Chien de garde), nor the previous year’s Hochelaga, Land of Souls ( Hochelaga, terre des âmes), was screened much outside the province, except at selected festivals.
It has also been some time since Canadian film made an impression at the Oscars. Though none has won the foreign-language prize since Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions in 2003, there was a period when nominations were common — Water by Deepa Mehta, Incendies by Denis Villeneuve, Monsieur Lazhar by Philippe Falardeau and War Witch by Kim Nguyen were all nominated between 2006 and 2012. Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World made the nine-film shortlist in 2016 but did not advance to the official nominees.
In addition to the category name change, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided in April to keep the rules for streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon, which state that their films are Oscar-eligible if they open in theatres, even if that is on the same day they’re made available for streaming.
This could affect the fortunes of such TIFF debuts as Netflix’s Marriage Story and The Two Popes, and Amazon’s The Aeronauts and Les Misérables. Netflix is also planning a cinema- and- streaming release of Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated drama The Irishman, after its world première at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 27. It will open in Toronto on Nov. 8.