List of Albanian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

Albania has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1996. The award is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue.cite web | title = Special Rules for the Best Foreign Language Film Award|publisher = Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences | url = http://www.oscars.org/80academyawards/rules/rule14.html | accessdate = 2008-08-21] It was not created until the 1956 Academy Awards, in which a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since.cite web | title = History of the Academy Awards - Page 2| publisher = Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences | url = http://www.oscars.org/aboutacademyawards/history02.html | accessdate = 2008-08-21] As of 2008, two Albanian films have been submitted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but neither has been nominated for an Oscar.

ubmissions

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956. The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Albania for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.

Both films, set in the late 1970s, are historical tales set against the backdrop of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship which ruled Albania for over forty years. Colonel Bunker is a drama about a soldier tasked by Hoxha to build a series of impossibly elaborate underground tunnels ('bunkers') to resist a potential foreign invasion. Slogans is a lighter film satirizing the ideological obsessions of the Hoxha regime, and their suffocating influence over the life of a small, rural school. Both films are among the few Albanian films to win awards at international Film Festivals. Bunker won an award at Venice. Slogans was the very first Albanian film to play at Cannes.

In recent years, Albania has shown little interest in the Oscar competition, opting not to submit a film since 2001. Out of the 39 European countries invited to participate in the competition, Albania is one of only three that has not entered a film in the past six years- the others are Belarus (1996) and Latvia (1992).

Although, Albania itself has maintained a low profile in this category, four other countries in the region- Greece, Italy, Macedonia and Switzerland- have each submitted films about Albania and the Albanian diaspora to the Oscars.

ee also

*List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film
*List of Academy Award-winning foreign language films
*Cinema of Albania

References

External links

* [http://www.oscars.org/awardsdatabase/ The Official Academy Awards Database]
* [http://www.oscars.org/impc_site2/index.html The Motion Picture Credits Database]
* [http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Academy_Awards_USA/ IMDb Academy Awards Page]