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Woman at War is a comedy, thriller, and drama from director Benedikt Erlingsson which tells of a middle-aged Reykjavik choir conductor, Halla, who is also a secret eco-warrior who sabotages her country’s electricity grid to save the Icelandic countryside from industrial pollution with only a bow and arrow. Halla, a 50-year-old independent woman (portrayed by Halldora Geirharosdottir), leads a double life as a passionate environmental activist.

Nominated: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - DramaJohn David Washington received his first Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, in which he plays Ron Stallworth, an idealistic black cop who joins the all-white Colorado Spring police force. Based on a memoir by the real-life detective, “Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime”, this stranger-than-fiction tale is John David Washington’s first leading role and tells the story of how Stallworth impersonated a white supremacist and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.

Nominated: Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - DramaFor niche audiences, Melissa McCarthy was always a known quantity. She played Sookie, Lorelei’s best friend on Gilmore Girls for three years and basically the same role in the Sandra Bullock’s The Back-Up Plan and Katherine Heigl’s Life As We Know It.

Take It or Leave It, which was written and directed by Liina Trikina-Vanhatalo, is about the ruggedly handsome Erik (portrayed by Reimo Sagor), a 30-year-old construction worker who is drifting through life. Born in Estonia, Erik works long hours in a Finnish construction site and by night, glowers over his pint at the girls who try and involve him in their good times.

Nominated: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - DramaWillem Dafoe portrays Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate by Globe-winning director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2008). The tormented Dutch painter has most famously been played on screen by Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life.

At the most recent Luxor Film Festival, an annual showplace of African films, a specific documentary was one of the most talked-about subjects among filmmakers and audience. It told the stories of young African women who became pregnant without being married, and as a form of severe punishment were banned to an island without a chance of returning to their villages and families.

The Wedding Ring or Zin’naariya is a Nigerian drama-romance film written and directed by Rahmatou Keita, a Nigerian journalist, writer and film director whose career began in 1990. It is about Tiyaa, a young woman who is a member of an aristocratic family and who returns to her home for the winter holidays in the Sultanate of Damagaran in Niger Republic, after finishing college abroad.

Based loosely on a real-life incident, The Journey tells a spare and streamlined story that exists at the intersection of the political and the personal. Co-written and directed by Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji, who lost a close cousin and many other family members in the protracted and bloody Iran-Iraq War, the movie is a psychological drama that examines the issues of extremism and sectarian violence.

Spitak, is a town and urban municipal community in the northern Lori Province of Armenia. It is 96 km north of the capital, Yerevan, and 22 km west of the provincial center of Vanadzor.

Those foolishly thinking that Hollywood has an exclusive license on big-budget, patriotic movies based on real-life military exploits would be well advised to check out Operation Red Sea, a brawny, sprawling and surprisingly bloody and graphic action film from screenwriter Feng Ji and director Dante Lam. Detailing an escalating series of rescue missions, the Mandarin-language film, touted in local media as China’s first modern naval film, is a highly experiential, international cinematic call-and-response to movies like Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor and American Sniper.