79TH Non-English Language Film Submissions

The terror comes during nighttime. Amid the sounds of nature, the birds, insects, barking dogs and mooing cows, it is the revved-up engines of black SUVs in the distance but coming closer that send the young girls into hiding.

As the film opens, Alma Felser, played by Maren Eggert, enters a bar that is reminiscent of a 1920s ballroom if not for the people dressed in modern-day outfits. Alma is on a date.

What are the five most important things on a man's mind during isolation? According to the dystopian drama Quarantine, his mind is wrapped around thoughts of diseases, hygiene, rules, food and suicide. The film’s main character, Felix, played by Russian actor Anatoly Bely, has been living by himself in a bunker for two decades.

Slavery did not end with Lincoln, the American Civil War, new laws proclaiming the so-called freedom of Black people or the questionable legal description of “separate but equal”. Not in the US, and certainly not in the nations of Southern Africa where Apartheid was not outlawed until 1990.

The world’s shortest poem is “Me, We. ” It was created by Muhammad Ali when he spoke to a group of Harvard students and one shouted out: “Give us a poem, Muhammad!” He came up with it on the spot, expressing a very simple sentiment – that we are nothing without each other.

In a year in which Argentina seems to embrace fantastic cinema with the release of several genre films in their theaters during the last few months, Natalia Mena's The Intruder, steps forth to represent the country at the Oscars and the Golden Globes. The film tells the story of Inés (Wild Tales' Erica Rivas), a woman in her forties enjoying a vacation in Mexico with Leopoldo, a man she met recently (The Moneychanger's Daniel Hendler).

The Champion, is the sports drama debut feature of director Maciej Barczewski, based on the memoir of bantamweight boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski. A non-Jewish Polish boxer who is also known as “Teddy,” Pietrzykowski was one of the earliest prisoners who arrived at the newly created concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1940.

At 92, José "Pepe" Soriano can say that he had a happy and fulfilling career. For decades he was one of the most prominent Argentine actors since his debut in the Colon Theatre in 1953 in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong attracted a lot of attention last year with his bold familial drama A Sun. This year, he further establishes himself as one of the most noteworthy international filmmakers with The Falls, an unusual exploration of a mother-daughter relationship hinged on the predicament of mental illness coupled with the pandemic lockdown.

“I know this one takes place in Colombia but you are right, it really represents what is going on around the world and America. ”With those words, John Leguizamo summed up Dark Blood, Colombian director Harold Trompetero’s drama about a man who copes with his new life of abuse and humiliation in prison while dealing with tragedy, sorrow and the repercussions of his crimes on his family.