Two Finnish productions will compete for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film of 2022.
Finnish Oscar jury selected Title No. 6, directed by Juho Kuosmanen, as the country’s candidate for the category in October, and the U.S. Motion Picture Academy has approved the film Wife of a grave digger (known in Finnish as Guled & Nasra) Nominated for the Somalia Prize.
Wife of a grave digger directed Khadar Ayderus Ahmed in cogeneration involving companies from France, Somalia, Germany and the Helsinki-based production company Bufo.
Ahmed’s director debut was filmed in Djibouti – formerly part of Somalia – in 2019, but its release was delayed by the Covid pandemic. It was initially suspected whether Wife of a grave digger could be defined as a Somali film, but the jury eventually approved the nomination, making it Somalia’s first nominee in the Best International Film category.
The film premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it became part of the International Critics Week program and has also won awards from the African Film Academy and the Toronto Film Festival.
The Academy’s long list of 90 films will be shortened to 15 films on December 21, and the actual nominations will be announced in February.
The 2022 Oscar Gala, also known as the Oscar, will be awarded on March 27th.
Source: The Nordic Page