Anthony Chen’s Wet Season Didn’t Make The Oscars Shortlist
The Oscar nominations will be announced on Mar 15.
Singapore’s Oscar dream has again eluded her.
Anthony Chen’s coming-of-age story Wet Season didn’t make it to the Oscar’s International Feature Film shortlist, the Academy of Motional Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday (Feb 9).
Of the 93 films eligible in the category, only 15 were shortlisted, including Taiwan’s Golden Horse Award-winning family drama A Sun and Hongkong’s Better Days, the teen bullying drama starring Zhou Dongyu.
Here’s the full shortlist:
Another Round (Denmark)
Better Days (Hongkong)
Charlatan (Czech Republic)
Collective (Romania)
Dear Comrades! (Russia)
I’m No Longer Here (Mexico)
Hope (Norway)
La Llorona (Guatemala)
The Mole Agent (Chile)
Night of the Kings (Ivory Coast)
Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Sun Children (Iran)
Two of Us (France)
A Sun (Taiwan)
The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia)
These films will move on to the next round of voting on Mar 5-9 to decide the final five nominees. The Oscar nominations will be announced on Mar 15, with the ceremony slated to take place on Apr 25.
Wet Season is Chen’s second film to be selected for Oscar consideration; the first was his 2013 debut Ilo Ilo. Other past submissions include Eric Khoo’s My Magic (2008) and Tatsumi (2011), Michelle Chong’s Already Famous (2012), Boo Junfeng’s Apprentice (2016), Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye (2017), and Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined (2019).
Last month, Chen announced that he will reunite with his Ilo Ilo and Wet Season actors Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler on We Are All Strangers, a pandemic-set drama and the third instalment in his ‘Growing Up trilogy.
Photo: Giraffe Pictures