List of submissions to the 75th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film explained

2002 Best Foreign Language Film submissions
Award1 Type:	Oscar winner
Award1 Winner:	Nowhere in Africa
Award2 Type:	Total submissions
Award2 Winner:	54
Award3 Type:	First-time submissions
Award3 Winner:	3
Previous:	2001
Main:	List
Next:	2003

This is a list of submissions to the 75th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. 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 every year since the award was created in 1956. The award is handed out annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films.

For the 75th Academy Awards fifty-four films were submitted.^[1] Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Chad submitted films for the first time. The previous year's winner Bosnia & Herzegovina did not submit a film. The Brazilian submission, City of God was considered one of the favorites, but it was famously snubbed. When the film was released the following year in the US, it garnered nominations in four main categories including Best Screenplay and Best Director.

Germany won the award for the second time, marking the first win since its reunification, with Nowhere in Africa by Caroline Link.

Submissions

Submitting country	Film title used in nomination	Original title	Language(s)	Director(s)	Result
	FireDancer		Pashto, English
	Rachida		French, Arabic
	Kamchatka		Spanish
	Gebürtig		German	Robert Schindel and Lukas Stepanik
	The Clay Bird	মাটির ময়না
	The Son	Le Fils	French
	City of God	Cidade de Deus	Brazilian Portuguese
	Warming Up Yesterday's Lunch	Подгряване на вчерашния обед	Bulgarian	Kostadin Bonev
	Un crabe dans la tête	Un crabe dans la tête	French	André Turpin
	Abouna		Chadian Arabic, French	Mahamat Saleh Haroun
	Ogú y Mampato en Rapa Nui	Ogú y Mampato en Rapa Nui	Spanish	Alejandro Rojas
	Hero	英雄
	The Invisible Children	Los niños invisibles	Spanish
	Fine Dead Girls	Fine mrtve djevojke	Croatian
	Nothing More	Nada	Spanish
	The Wild Bees	Divoké vcely	Czech
	Open Hearts	Elsker dig for evigt	Danish
	A Girl's Secret	أسرار البنات	Arabic	Magdy Ahmed Aly
	The Man Without a Past	Mies vailla menneisyyttä	Finnish
	8 Femmes		French
	Nowhere in Africa	Nirgendwo in Afrika
	The Only Journey of His Life	Το μόνον της ζωής του ταξείδιον	Greek	Lakis Papastathis
	The Touch	天脈傳奇	English, Mandarin	Peter Pau
	Hukkle		Hungarian, Czech
	The Sea	Hafið	Icelandic, Norwegian, English
	Devdas	देवदास	Hindi	Sanjay Leela Bhansail
	Ca-bau-kan		Indonesian	Nia diNata
	I'm Taraneh, 15	من ترانه ۱۵ سال دارم
	Broken Wings	כנפיים שבורות	Hebrew	Nir Bergman
	Pinocchio		Italian
	Out		Japanese	Hideyuki Hirayama
	Oasis	오아시스	Korean	Lee Chang-dong
	When Maryam Spoke Out	لمّا حكيت مريم	Arabic	Assad Fouladkar
	Dead Man's Hand	Petites misères	French	Laurent Brandenburger & Philippe Boon
	The Crime of Padre Amaro	El crimen del Padre Amaro	Spanish	Carlos Carrera
	Zus & Zo		Dutch	Paula van der Oest
	Hold My Heart	Tyven, tyven	Norwegian	Trygve Allister Diesen
	Small Voices	Mga Munting tinig	Tagalog, English	Gil M. Portes
	Edi		Polish	Piotr Trzaskalski
	O Delfim		Portuguese	Fernando Lopes
	Philanthropy	Filantropica	Romanian
	House of Fools	Дом дураков
	Labyrinth	Лавиринт	Serbian	Miroslav Lekic
	Cruel Joys	Kruté radosti	Slovak, Czech	Juraj Nvota
	Headnoise	Zvenenje v glavi	Slovene	Andrej Košak
	Mondays in the Sun	Los lunes al sol	Spanish	Fernando Leon de Aranoa
	Lilja 4-ever		Swedish, Russian, English, Polish
	Aime ton père		French
	The Best of Times	美麗時光
	Monrak Transistor	มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์	Thai
	The Magic Box	La Boîte magique	French, Arabic
	9	Dokuz	Turkish
	Eldra		Welsh	Tim Lyn
	Corazon de Fuego	El último tren	Spanish	Diego Arsuaga
	The Archangel's Feather	La pluma del arcángel		Luis Manzo

Notes

• Afghanistan, which had been liberated from Taliban rule only a year before, submitted their first-ever film for consideration. The movie, about Afghan-Americans, was filmed mostly in English, but partially in Dari. When the film was shown in Afghanistan, it was entirely dubbed into Dari and it was this version that was sent to the Oscars. At first, the Academy claimed that the submission did not quite conform to the rules, however, the film, whose director had been murdered before post-production was finished, was accepted.
• Hong Kong elected to send an action film, The Touch, that was disqualified because the dialogue was completely in English, and not in a foreign language
• Palestine tried to submit Divine Intervention, forcing the Academy to make a decision about whether it would accept Palestine as a country. AMPAS determined that Palestine was not a country, and therefore could not submit a film. They also said that there had been no "national selection committee" that chose Divine Intervention, as required by the rules. It was also unclear how the film would be released in its home country according to the rules, since Palestine had no internationally recognized boundaries. This decision was much criticized, especially since countries like Taiwan, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong, none of which recognized as sovereign nations by the United Nations, had been submitting movies for years. AMPAS reversed its decision the following year, and allowed Divine Intervention to compete.
• The United Kingdom sent The Warrior, a British-produced film set in India, spoken entirely in Hindi, and filmed by Asif Kapadia, a British director of Indian descent. However, the Academy asked to submit another film since AMPAS rules stated that all films had to be in a language indigenous to the submitting country. The Warrior was not acceptable, AMPAS argued, because Hindi was not a language indigenous to the United Kingdom, and the film was not about, nor set among British people. Had the film been set among the Hindi-speaking community in the UK, it would have been approved. BAFTA appealed to the Academy to reconsider, but to no avail. The film won Best British Film at the BAFTA awards the following year. Britain ended up choosing Eldra, a film in Welsh. In 2006, AMPAS changed the rules to allow countries to choose films which were not in the language of the submitting country. Canada was the first to take advantage of this new rule by submitting Water, which was also in Hindi.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Record-Breaking 54 Countries in Competition for Oscar . . 2 December 2002 . 11 July 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20021219022515/http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2002/02.12.02.html . 19 December 2002 . dead .