Golden Globes: Angelina Jolie Scores Second Foreign Language Nomination

Angelina Jolie has scored her second nomination in the Golden Globes’ Best Foreign Language Film category with Cambodia’s First They Killed My Father. The Netflix drama is also the representative from Cambodia for the Foreign Language Oscar, whose shortlist comes out at the end of this week.

Jolie’s 2011 Bosnian War-set In the Land of Blood and Honey also was nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but was ineligible for the comparable Oscar race as it was an American film and the U.S. cannot submit movies to the category. With the current film, Jolie is the highest-profile American director to represent another country in another tongue as the Oscar submission. At the Globes, Clint Eastwood previously won in the category for his 2006 Japanese drama Letters From Iwo Jima.

The five nominees announced for the Best Foreign Language Golden Globe today — A Fantastic Woman, In The Fade, Loveless, The Square and First They Killed My Father — are all seen as strong candidates for a slot on the Oscar shortlist, but the two voting orgs do not always match up. Last year’s entry from France, Elle, was nominated for a Globe and eventually won the prize. In a stunning omission, AMPAS gave it a pass.

The HFPA has shown great affection for France in past years, but this time around shut out Robin Campillo’s BPM, a leading contender for Oscar’s shortlist. It won the Grand Prize in Cannes this year as well as the Best Foreign Language Film award from the New York Film Critics (tying in the Los Angeles Film Critics’ same category), a European Film Award, and landed on Sight & Sound’s Top 25 list of 2017 movies.

Films from Cannes that are in the Globes mix include Ruben Ostlund’s Palme d’Or winner The Square which on Saturday night swept the European Film Awards and recently earned a berth in the National Board of Review’s Top 5. Ostlund’s previous film, Force Majeure, was nominated at the Globes but missed the Oscar nominations in a widely heard snub.

Also in the mix at the Globes is Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Russian family drama Loveless, winner of Cannes’ Jury Prize. Zvyagintsev is the only nominee to have previously won a Golden Globe, with 2014’s Leviathan. The film was also nominated for an Oscar, but that statue ultimately went to Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida.

Fatih Akin is up for the Globes for the first time with In the Fade, his German terrorism drama that won Diane Kruger the Best Actress prize in Cannes. The film is Germany’s Oscar representative, the second time Akin has had the honor after 2007’s The Edge of Heaven.

Also with his first Golden Globe nomination is Sebastian Lelio for A Fantastic Woman. The film about a young transgender waitress and singer who is forced to confront suspicion and contempt after the death of her older lover won the Silver Bear Best Screenplay prize in Berlin this year and has an Indie Spirit nom as Best International Film.

A Fantastic Woman is produced by Fabula’s Juan de Dios Larraín and Pablo Larraín. The latter has repped Chile four times at Oscar with his own directing efforts and scored a nomination for 2012’s No. The Globes have nominated him twice, making this the third year in a row that Chile has been included in the race.

Lelio today said he is “hopeful that the recognition will help to further the stories of strong people who face adversity every day just to live as themselves.”

For reference, since 2010, the Globes and the Oscars have matched up on eventual winners five times with: 2015’s Son Of Saul, 2013’s The Great Beauty, 2012’s Amour, 2011’s A Separation and 2010’s In A Better World.