Movies from countries without Academy awards. Finalists/ nominated

Alsino, a boy of 10 or 12, lives with his grandmother in a remote area of Nicaragua. He's engulfed in the war between rebels and government troops when a US advisor orders the army to open a staging area by the boy's hamlet. Alsino tries to be a child, climbing trees with a girl, looking through his grandfather's trunk of mementos and trying to fly; he goes to town to sell a saddle, has his first drink and is taken to a brothel. But the war surrounds him. The US advisor takes Alsino on a chopper flight, but he's unimpressed. The soldiers' cruelties awake rebel sympathies in Alsino, and after an army assault backfires, the lad is fully baptized into the conflict.

Santiago, a retired accountant, casually meets Angelina during one of his daily walks in Old San Juan. They soon become friends, even though she refuses to give out any personal information.

Old Thorgeir must leave his home far off in the Icelandic 'countryside' and move into a home for senior citizens in Reykjavik. There he meets an old friend from his childhood, Stella. Thorgeir soon becomes unhappy living there and together with Stella he steals a jeep. Together they leave the city for Stella's old home in northwestern Iceland. A drama who asks us: how important is it to have a long life if you have to leave everything that has a meaning for you?

An aging paranoid war criminal, protected by his faithful wife, faces death while being haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Félicité sings in a bar in Kinshasa. When her 14-year-old son has a motorcycle accident, she goes on a frantic search through the streets of Kinshasa, a world of music and dreams. And her path crosses that of Tabu.

His own body turned into a living work of art and promptly exhibited in a museum, Sam, a Syrian refugee, will soon realize to have sold away more than just his skin.

After an emotional exchange between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee escalates, the men end up in a court case that gets national attention.

In the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I, a young Bedouin boy experiences a greatly hastened coming-of-age as he embarks on a perilous desert journey to guide a British officer to his secret destination.

The story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of forty years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.

A cattle herder and his family who reside in the dunes of Timbuktu find their quiet lives -- which are typically free of the Jihadists determined to control their faith -- abruptly disturbed.

In 1992, war rages in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia. An Estonian man, Ivo, has decided to stay behind and harvest his crops of tangerines. In a bloody conflict at his door, a wounded man is left behind, and Ivo takes him in.

Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

The story recounts the early life of Genghis Khan who was a slave before going on to conquer half the world in 1206.

A woman is led by her family to her new husband's home, to live with, presumably, his elderly mother and younger brother. Despite being forced into the marriage, she discovers that he is not such a bad catch after all but domestic bliss does not last long.

Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

M arrives in Helsinki only to be viciously attacked by thugs and pronounced dead by medics. He revives but with no memory of his past or his identity. He rebuilds his life from scratch, but the past inevitably catches up with him.

An aging chief's last stand, lessons for the new, and the education of a young chief-to-be played against harsh Nature in Nepal's Dolpo. When his son dies returning from Tibet's salt lakes, Tinle blames Karma, his son's friend, refuses to give Karma his blessing as the new chief, and organizes a rival caravan to take the salt to lower Nepal to trade for grain. He, a few old men, his son's widow, his grandson, and his second son, a monk, set out on the arduous journey. Fearing storms, Karma has led his caravan out of the village before the auspicious day ordained by the lamas. Tinle's group catches Karma's before the final pass; the two stubborn men lock wills with Tinle's grandson watching.

The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, Bai Dan, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.

The sharp, often hilarious satire that became the most successful film in Israeli history (until that time) is about new immigrants Sallah and his family, who are left in a shack near their promised apartment and are abandoned for months. A Yemenite Jewish family that was flown to Israel during "Operation Magic Carpet" - a clandestine operation that flew 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel the year after the state was formed - is forced to move to a government settlement camp. The patriarch of the family, portrayed by Chaim Topol, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Peace in the Fields takes place around 1925. Stanne a wealthy Flemish farmer, is alleged to have murdered his fiancée 20 years before. Although the case against him was dismissed fierce resentment still burns between his family and that of Johanna, the victim's mother. And then the farmer's son falls in love with the girl's younger sister. Johanna forbids their marriage and her old enemy starts to feel again the pangs of conscience, the need to confess the crime.

The plot is set in an underdeveloped and remote area of a fictitious country, where the locals try to build an asphalt road in spite of careless attitude of the Government. The story follows the adventures in their self-reliant mission that lasts a whole year.

During World War II, nine members of the Norwegian Resistance are trapped by the Germans in a deadly ambush. Only one escapes, and a fierce hunt through the ice desert has begun.

Living in exile after their father's death, the children of an usurped and murdered king converge to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge.

A simple yet devout Christian makes a vow to Saint Barbara after she saves his donkey, but everyone he meets seems determined to misunderstand his intentions. Will he be able to keep his promise in the end?

In this melodrama, a poverty-stricken woman raises her sons through many trials and tribulations. But no matter the struggles, she always sticks to her own moral code.