News

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday revealed the 276 feature films that are eligible for consideration at the 94rd Oscars, which are set to air live March 27 on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

The number is 90 fewer than last year’s 366, but this year’s eligibility period was only 10 months.

To be eligible for Best Picture consideration, films must have submitted a confidential Academy Representation and Inclusion Standards entry as part of the submission requirements. Nominations voting begins January 27 and concludes on February 1. The Oscar nominations will be revealed on Tuesday, February 8.

Today’s news comes about a month after the Academy released its shortlists in the International Film, Documentary Feature, Original Score, Original Song, Makeup & Hairstyling, Visual Effects, Sound and the Live-Action, Documentary and Animated Shorts categories.

Here is the full list of films eligible for Best Picture at the 94rd annual Academy Awards,...

A moody, clenched drama that works its tension so deep you may find your palms marked with the indentations of your fingernails by the end, “Les Nôtres” is the deeply uneasy but compelling second film from director Jeanne Leblanc (“Isla Blanca”). Illuminated by a powerfully self-possessed performance by Émilie Bierre as the 13-year-old whose pregnancy will have dire consequences for all except the pedophile responsible, this is an enraging film astringent enough to peel the paint from the façade of virtue propped up by the small-town Quebecois community in which it takes place.

Pretty, popular Magalie (Bierre) and her little brother are being raised by her mother Isabelle (Marianne Farley) after her father died in an industrial tragedy for which the town of Sainte-Adeline is still in mourning. Isabelle is helped out by best friend Chantale, who happens to be married to the mayor and Isabelle’s employer, Jean-Marc...

Jeanne Leblanc’s chilly Canadian feature “Les Nôtres” . But an intriguing ensemble of tormented individuals — a flinty teenage girl, her widowed mother, a beloved but insidious mayor, his repressed wife, and more — remain fixed behind a pane of glass throughout, with Leblanc maintaining a disconcerting distance from the true darkness roiling beneath a rotten Quebec town plagued by murmurs of sexual abuse and casual racism. Expertly composed within an inch of its life, the film only brushes against these topics, leaving the door open to bigger ideas left unexplored.

For all its measured composure (by cinematographer Tobie Marier-Robitaille), the film’s most sublime shot is its opening one, framing the naked back of the blonde-headed teen Magalie (Émilie Bierre), splayed across a rumpled bedspread. Something horrible is being telegraphed. In present day, but likely not long beyond this flash to the past, she’s widely regarded as one of the...

I've never understood how the myth persists that small towns are somehow better places than cities; the idea that a smaller community is more loving and caring, with less crime (perhaps true but solely by virtue of their being fewer people), people who look after each other, everyone knows each other. It's small towns that tend to breed ignorance, where the monsters hide in plain sight, and those who should be supported are shunned and shamed. Jeanne Leblanc's sophomore feature shines a harsh light on a small town in Québec, one where something that should have brought the community together, ends up ruining the lives of several people. Les Nôtres translates as 'Our Own': that's the impression small communities want to give, that they look...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Emilie Bierre as Magalie in Les Nôtres

A close-knit small town community in Quebec. The shocking discovery that a 13-year-old girl is pregnant. A tide of accusations and condemnations which brings all sorts of unpleasant things to the surface. Jeanne Leblanc’s bruising new drama, Les Nôtres (aka Our Own), is hardly the first film to have addressed subject matter like this, but it’s rare in its perceptiveness about what it’s really like for a young teenager to face such struggles, and it features an astonishing central performance by Emilie Bierre. When I met Jeanne she opened our conversation by saying that she thinks a female perspective really brings something different to the mix.

“This is a three woman movie. Marianne Farley, who is playing the mom, also co-produced and Judith (Baribeau) co-wrote. And I think the first idea comes from Marianne. It came with this real story,...

Exclusive: Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired U.S. rights to the genre-bending look at the life of musician and trans culture icon Billy Tipton in the documentary No Ordinary Man directed by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt. The film production and distribution company founded by the late, great Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys also acquired the U.S. rights to Jeanne Leblanc’s suspense-drama Les Nôtres (Our Own).

The news of the acquisition of No Ordinary Man comes at an appropriate time as March 31 was Trans Day of Visibility. The docu spotlights American Jazz musician Billy Tipton, whose life was often framed as the story of an ambitious woman passing as a man in pursuit of a music career. In No Ordinary Man, Tipton’s story is reimagined and performed by trans artists as they collectively paint a portrait of an unlikely hero. The film features breakout stars in the trans community,...