And finally, I have published predictions for all 23 major categories at the 2013 Oscars as I open the doors to Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary (Feature), perhaps two of the hardest categories to predict.
The Academy makes it a little easier by narrowing down the two categories with a shortlist of nine films competing for Best Foreign Language out of the 71 that were submitted and a list of 15 contenders for Best Documentary. However, the quality of films in each category and the fact I haven’t seen even half of the contenders makes things that much more difficult.
That said, join me for what is my opening shot in the dark for these two categories, both of which I do believe there are two front-runners in each with the rest competing for the final three slots, but then again, even that could be questionable.
Best Foreign Language Film
Dark and depressing or uplifting? As far as I’m concerned this is a race between Austria’s Amour and France’s The Intouchables, but the competition here is stiff enough, and the Foreign branch of the Academy is always a tough one to put your finger on, which means this race could be up for grabs and offer a surprise.
The Weinstein’s will surely make a push with Kon-Tiki and I’ve heard plenty of good things about A Royal Affair. I just saw Pablo Larrain‘s No, which is quite strong, and while I’ve head mixed reactions to Cristian Mungiu‘s Beyond the Hills its Best Actress and Best Screenplay wins at Cannes won’t go unnoticed.
Here’s my current list of predicted nominees followed by the full field of contenders.
- Amour
- The Intouchables
- Kon-Tiki
- A Royal Affair
- No
You can check out the full field of contenders for Best Foreign Language Film and my complete, ordered rankings right here.
Best Documentary
This is almost impossible to predict once you get beyond the top two. Searching for Sugar Man seems to be both an audience and critical favorite that was already name-checked by the National Board of Review, named best documentary by the International Documentary Association and was nominated by the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
The Gatekeepers, however, is a critical favorite that was also named one of the top five docs of the year by the National Board of Review, named Best Doc by the Los Angeles Film Critics and took runner-up with the New York Film Critics.
The big question are those that follow. Eugene Jarecki‘s The House I Live In is receiving a lot of good buzz, Alex Gibney (Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God) is never one to count out, Kirby Dick‘s The Invisible War helped change policy, Chasing Ice is excellent, How to Survive a Plague has been named a lot in the precursor awards and Detropia is especially timely.
For me it’s a race between the top two, but the runners-up could be just about any of them.
Here’s my current list of predicted nominees:
- Searching for Sugar Man
- The Gatekeepers
- Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
- Detropia
- How To Survive a Plague
You can check out the full field of contenders for Best Documentary and my complete, ordered rankings right here.
You can find all of my 2013 Oscar predictions right here and stay tuned as I will be fine-tuning them as we lead up to the 85th Academy Awards nominations on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
