Hochelaga Canada’s Oscar hopeful

Historical drama Hochelaga by François Girard has been selected as Canada’s pick for the Best ForeignLanguage Film category at next year’s Oscars, Telefilm Canada says.

The film, about a Mohawk archaeologist exploring his ancestry, which spans 750 years in Montreal’s history, screened at TIFF.

Finalists will be announced in December and five films will make the short list in January 2018 for the awards show on March 4.

Canada had finalists in the category three years in a row between 2010 and 2012. Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, in 2004, was the last Canadian entry to win Best Foreign-Language Film.