Oman today_ This year, France’s Oscar selection committee is torn between two films: Nouvelle Vague directed by Richard Linklater and It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi. France has not won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in over three decades, and past choices have sometimes been unexpected; for example, two years ago, Anatomy of a Fall was chosen over The Taste of Things.
In 2022, France bypassed the controversial Palme d’Or winner Titane and instead selected Happening by Audrey Diwan, which had won the Golden Lion. The film addressed political themes and was linked to the Roe v. Wade case in the United States.
This year, there is again a dilemma between Panahi’s and Linklater’s films. Both are directed by non-French filmmakers, but one, like Titane or Anatomy of a Fall, is a dark, political, festival-focused film, while the other is a love letter to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.
Netflix sees Nouvelle Vague as more than just a festival piece and plans to campaign heavily for it in the categories of Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars.
If Panahi is chosen, he would become the fourth Iranian filmmaker to be nominated for Best International Feature Film, following Majid Majidi, Asghar Farhadi, and Mohammad Rasoulof.
In Linklater’s first French film, actors include Guillaume Maubrek as Jean-Luc Godard and Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, the star of Breathless. Jean-Jacques Lousseau, Judy Ruth Forrest, and Jonas Marmei also appear. The film focuses on the French New Wave movement and the behind-the-scenes making of Breathless, featuring legendary figures such as Jean-Pierre Melville, Éric Rohmer, Robert Bresson, and Jean Cocteau.