A World Of Pioneering Talents

Along with best picture contender Elle these 13 films may have the momentum to make the Oscar shortlist (still to be announced as this issue went to press)

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BELGIUM

The Ardennes

DIRECTOR Robin Pront

TOP AWARD Film Festival Ostend award for best film

Two brothers by blood — and in crime — struggle to maintain their dual relationship in The Ardennes, a gritty pic that isn’t as Cain-and-Abel-ish as it seems. Here, unlike in the biblical tale, resentments go in both directions but are tempered by sincere brotherly love. A promising if not quite audacious debut by Pront, the film benefits from a solidly envisioned family dynamic but doesn’t really generate much heat until its final act. — JOHN DEFORE

CHILE

Neruda

DIRECTOR Pablo Larrain TOP AWARD National Board of Review award and Golden Globe nom for top foreign film Gael Garcia Bernal reteams with No director Larrain to play an obsessive detective on the trail of the famed Chilean poet-politician forced into exile in 1948. Focusing on the period in the late 1940s when the writer, then a senator for the Chilean Communist Party, was living in hiding before fleeing first to Argentina and then to France, Neruda takes its stylistic cues from the poet’s work. Guillermo Calderon’s screenplay blends surreal perspective, political anger, simmering passion, mordant humor and celebratory sensuality for an idiosyncratic contemplation of a great artist. — DAVID ROONEY

DENMARK

Land of Mine

WRITER-DIRECTOR Martin Zandvliet