Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner Lebanon for U.S. distribution. The acquisition follows a recent trend by Sony Classics as the third Israeli film in recent years to be picked up by the studio following Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir and Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit.
The film centers on the same subject as Bashir being described as an unrelenting look at war from inside a military tank based on the director Samuel Maoz's own experiences as a young soldier during his government's ill-fated decision to invade Lebanon in 1982.
The hope here is to obviously get Lebanon a Foreign Language Oscar bid, but that will also assume Israel will submit it for consideration, a result we should know soon enough as the deadline for all countries to send in their submissions is September 30. I have been keeping track of all the submissions in the RopeofSilicon "The Contenders" section right here, in which I just added the foreign language submission for Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, India, Iran, Philippines, Poland, Switzerland and Thailand.
For more on Lebanon you can click here for a look at four images from the film after it also was recently screened at the Toronto Film Festival. The international trailer is attached above.
I still think it's bullshit that a foreign country can only submit one picture for Best Foreign Film consideration.
The Foreign Language category turned into a joke these past years. When movies like "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" aren't even nominated, you know something's very wrong.
I'm curious about the movie Brazil chose, though. I still haven't seen it.