- List of submissions to the 64th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
34 films, all from different countries, were submitted for the
64th Academy Awards in the categoryAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film . The five nominated films (highlighted in bold) came from Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy and Sweden.Germany caused a huge controversy when it took the unusual step not to submit any film to the competition.Europa, Europa byAgnieszka Holland was one of the pre-selection favorites to win the award. Although the film was made in German and about Germany, the country's National Film Board said that because they considered the film to be a majority-French production, and because the director was Polish, they did not consider it qualified to represent Germany. This is the only time since 1977 that Germany failed to be represented.In violation of the rule that films must be in the language of the submitting country, the Academy decided to accept a submission from the United Kingdom that was mostly in Russian.
AMPAS acknowledged that they had received four submissions from new Eastern European republics-
Armenia ,Croatia , Macedonia andSlovenia - which had each declared independence in mid-to-late 1991. Since none of the countries had yet been recognized internationally, the films were disqualified and not screened, although representatives from their parent states- the USSR and Yugoslavia- were allowed to compete. AMPAS did not announce the titles, but based on the small size of these republic's film industries at the time it appears certain that Macedonia chose Stole Popov's "Tetoviranje", the most celebrated Yugoslavian film of 1991, and that Croatia, Slovenia and Armenia likely chose family drama "Fragments", black comedy "The Cartier Operation" and surreal religious drama "The Voice in the Wilderness" respectively.
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