France selects Tran Anh Hung's film to compete at Oscar 2024

Variety reported that the French Oscar Committee has selected director Tran Anh Hung's film 'The Pot-au-Feu' to compete in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

According to many sources, this is a relatively surprising result as previously Anatomy of a Fall – the work that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival – was the name that received attention. At this festival, The Pot-au-Feu with the participation of two stars Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel also helped Tran Anh Hung win the Best Director award.

Anatomy of a Fall and 3 Works Considered by the French Oscar Committee

The Pot-au-Feu is set in 1885 and follows the life of a brilliant chef, Dodin Bouffant (Magimel), who has been romantically involved with Eugénie (Binoche) for two decades. When Eugénie is reluctant to marry him, Dodin decides to do something he has never done before: cook for her.

This year's selection committee includes producer Charles Gillibert, former Lionsgate chairman Patrick Wachsberger and Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat. In addition, renowned directors Olivier Assayas, Mounia Meddour and other film distributors also voted.

Scene from the movie The Pot-au-Feu.

Other films considered by the Committee were Clement Cogitore's Sons of Ramses , Thomas Cailley's The Animal Kingdom and Denis Imbert's On The Wandering Paths .

Other notable works that were sidelined by the Commission include Happening , an abortion-themed film adapted from the 2022 Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux's work of the same name, directed by Audrey Diwan, and Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire , a film that made waves at many prestigious film festivals.

Anatomy of a Fall was acquired by NEON – the owner of Bong Joon-ho’s blockbuster Parasite . In France, the film earned approximately 8 million Euros, and reached nearly 1 million viewers. This is one of the biggest effects that a French Palme d’Or winning film has had in many years.

NEON plans to release Anatomy of a Fall in the US on October 13, and is expected to campaign for the film in several categories at the 2024 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director, as well as Best Original Screenplay.

The film's star, Sandra Huller, is also a leading contender for the upcoming Best Actress category. In Anatomy of a Fall, she plays a German novelist on trial for murdering her husband. A deeply feminist film, the film explores the perspective of a woman struggling to balance work, marriage, and parenting.

France hasn’t won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film since Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993. The country’s entry in 2022 is Alice Diop’s Saint Omer , which won the Silver Lion and future Golden Lion at Venice but didn’t make the shortlist. The country’s last finalist was Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables in 2019.

Director Tran Anh Hung received the Best Director award at Cannes 2023

In 1993, Vietnamese-American director Tran Anh Hung was also nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars for The Scent of Green Papaya, but did not win.

The Pot-au-Feu won a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as receiving extremely subtle praise from many film criticism sites. The work was also acquired by IFC Films and Sapan Studio in June 2023, scheduled to hit North American theaters in early November.

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