Every winter, including this coming one, is reserved for the most important (pre)nominations in the world of film and Zagreb Film Festival will be the perfect opportunity for the lovers of the seventh art to hone their skills of predicting the winners. The plentiful program of the 22^nd ZFF includes as many as six contenders for the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award – the Oscar for Best International Feature: Belgian, British, French, Latvian, Lithuanian and Thai, while nine feature-film titles (7 fiction and 2 animated) from this year’s program are in the running for the European Film Awards, the so-called European Oscars.

Three films are currently in the race for both Oscars – the American and European one. These are Julie Keeps Quiet (Main Program: Feature Film competition), Emilia Pérez (The Great 5) and Flow (Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region).

Leonardo Van Dijl’s Belgian feature Julie Keeps Quiet is a tense character study about a young tennis player who finds herself in the midst of a scandal involving her coach. With Naomi Osaka as executive producer, the film’s excellent film crew includes director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis (I, Tonya, Cruella), the music is composed by Pulitzer-winner Caroline Shaw, while the lead performance of the young Tessa Van den Broeck, herself a former tennis player, has been especially praised. The film premiered in Cannes, winning the SACD Award, and was also nominated for this year’s LUX Audience Award.

The sumptuous French pop opera Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan) scooped up the Jury Prize for Direction and the Best Actress Award at Cannes (for the ensemble cast of Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña and Adriana Paz). Overqualified and underappreciated, lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) spends more time worrying about getting criminals out of trouble than bringing them to justice. One day, she gets an unexpected way out when the drug cartel boss, Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón), hires her to help him accomplish a secret plan. Manitas wants to retire from the cartel, embrace her true self, and finally become a woman.

Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow is the first animated film in one of ZFF’s competition programs. Premiering in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, Flow was immediately recognised by IndieWire critics as one of the “most groundbreaking animated films about nature since Bambi”. The feature about a cat that wakes up in a flooded world and must overcome its fear of water while searching for land with a group of other animals is a real animated spectacle, but also a layered meditation on the fragility of our environment and the spirit of friendship and community.

Just as interesting are the other contenders in the race for International Oscars: Thailand is represented by How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a touching comedy drama by Pat Boonnitipat that broke box office records across Asia; Lithuania’s contender Drowning Dry directed by Venice laureate Laurynas Bareiša is an intriguing cinematic puzzle piece; while United Kingdom has offered up Santosh, a brilliant crime thriller directed by Sandhya Suri (I For India, ZFF 2005) screened at Cannes, Toronto and Karlovy Vary. The shortlist consisting of 15 finalists will be announced on 17 December, while the final five will be known on 17 January 2025.

The other contenders for the European Film Awards screening in ZFF’s programs are: Romanian The New Year That Never Came by Bogdan Mureșanu, Icelandic When the Light Breaks, directed by the guest of the 22nd ZFF Rúnar Rúnarsson, German Dying by Matthias Glasner, Lithuanian Toxic, a look into the merciless world of modelling and catwalks directed by Saulė Bliuvaitė, and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. Along with Flow, Kristina Dufkova’s Living Large, from the KinoKino program is also a candidate for the European Film Award in the Animated Feature Film category. The finalists will be announced on 5 November, while the 37^th European Film Awards will take place on 7 December in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film:

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, Thailand
Julie Keeps Quiet, Belgium
Emilia Pérez, France
Flow, Latvia
Drowning Dry, Lithuania
Santosh, United Kingdom

Feature films selected for the European Film Award:

Dying, Matthias Glasner
Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard
Julie Keeps Quiet, Leonardo Van Dijl
The New Year That Never Came, Bogdan Mureșanu
The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar
Toxic, Saulė Bliuvaitė
When the Light Breaks, Rúnar Rúnarsson

Animated feature film finalists for the European Film Award:

Flow, Gints Zilbalodis
Living Large, Kristina Dufkova