Foreign Film Submissions - 75th Golden Globe Awards

The title of the Icelandic film - Under the Tree - sounds romantic and idyllic but that is far from the nature of the film. Director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson’s third feature film turns rather dark, to say the least.

Leather, military uniforms, and muscular men inspired artist Touko Laaksonen, better known by his pseudonym, Tom of Finland, who became a gay icon all over the world, shaping the fantasies of a generation of gay men and influencing art and fashion. This biopic, directed by Dome Karukoski, narrates Laaksonen’s life from his early twenties, when he served his native country during the war against the Soviet Union in 1939, to the middle of the sexual revolution in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Directed by Petra Biondina Volpe and starring Marie Leuenberger and Max Simonuschek, The Divine Order representing Switzerland for the Golden Globes describes the long journey of how this country was one of the last Democracies in the world, to approve the feminine vote in 1971. Switzerland had a very developed economy, but, as late as the 1970s, still relied on the “Divine Order” established in The Bible, considering women as second-class citizens.

Spoor is the new movie by veteran Polish auteur and three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland. The movie is also her first cinematic venture into true crime storytelling, or what she describes as her “cross-genre thriller.

It’s very difficult to find something nice, agreeable or at least amicable, about Quit Staring at My Plate. And that is presumably exactly the intention from the Croatian entry for Golden Globe consideration in the Foreign Language Film category.

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, Paths of the Soul follows the journey of a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes in the small village of Nyima, a remote village in Mangkang County, part of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage" to Lhasa, the holy capital of Tibet. The film takes the viewer on an incredible journey along the 1,200 km National Highway 318 over the course of 10 months that can be almost as painful to watch, following a family through suffering, death, childbirth and relentless religious resolve.

Fortunata, which means lucky in Italian, is the name of the young woman at the center of this story set in the Torpignattara neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome. It is the same location as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), now populated with Chinese and Muslim immigrants.

Patricia: El regreso del sueño (Patricia: The Return of the Dream) is the Dominican entry to the Foreign Film Language category at this 75th edition of the Golden Globes awards. The movie, directed by Rene Fortunato, is also one of the few comedies in a category where movies tend to show the most serious fare from all over the world.

It's not usual to see an American film participating in the Foreign Language category of the Golden Globes, especially when it has been shot entirely in this country, but certainly Menashe, which was a success at the Sundance Film Festival early this year, explores a culture that exists in the US that has never been exposed in the way director Joshua Z. Weinstein (no relation to the disgraced mogul) has achieved.

Shot in a documentary style, this French film tells the story of the AIDS epidemic and the fight of an activist group in Paris called ACT UP (the European counterpart of the New York group, formed in 1987) to gain access not only to medication, but also for transparency in fighting the disease. It is set in 1990s Paris as the pharmaceutical industry is too slow in developing drugs, and the politicians in government do not know how to handle the escalating crisis amidst defamation, racism and bigotry.