Pakistani film 'Zinda Bhaag' out of Oscar race

LOS ANGELES: ‘Zinda Bhaag’, the first Pakistani movie to be nominated for an Oscar, was left out of the best foreign language Oscar short list, but nine other movies made the cut, organisers announced on Friday.

Works by Palestinian, Danish and Hong Kong filmmakers were shortlisted for the best foreign language Oscar.

Along with Pakistan’s first entry in five decades, Saudi Arabia’s first ever candidate and an Oscar-winning Iranian director also failed to make the cut.

Films by Belgian, Bosnian, Cambodian, German, Hungarian and Italian directors are also on the shortlist.

The films were whittled down from a long list of 76 movies announced in October by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes Hollywood’s biggest annual awards fest.

They will be reduced to five nominees next month, before nominations in all Oscar categories are announced on January 16. The 86th Academy Awards will be held on March 2.

The nine shortlisted foreign language films are:

- “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” Belgium, director Felix van Groeningen.

- “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” Bosnia and Herzegovina, director Danis Tanovic.

- “The Missing Picture,” Cambodia, director Rithy Panh.

- “The Hunt,” Denmark, director Thomas Vinterberg.

-  “Two Lives,” Germany, director Georg Maas.

-  “The Grandmaster,” Hong Kong, director Wong Kar-wai.

-  “The Notebook,” Hungary, director Janos Szasz.

-  “The Great Beauty,” Italy, director Paolo Sorrentino.

- “Omar,” Palestine, director Hany Abu-Assad.

For Pakistan, “Zinda Bhaag” (“Flee Alive”) was the first Oscar entry for over 50 years. It is a comedy-thriller about three young men trying to escape the drudgery of their everyday lives through unconventional means.

The Saudi long-list candidate, “Wadjda” by Haifaa al-Mansour, is an avowedly feminist movie about a young girl’s quest to own a bicycle in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom where women are deprived of many rights, among them driving.

Directed by Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker and shot entirely in the Gulf state, the film won best Arabic feature award at the Dubai Film Festival last year and picked up an award in Cannes in March.