Russian Oscars entry makes foreign-language shortlist

Russia’s entry for the 89th Academy Awards, Andrey Konchalovsky’s Paradise (2016), is among the nine films to have been shortlisted for the foreign-language film category.

Paradise won the Silver Lion award for Best Director at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. The Russian-German co-production centres on the relationship between an inmate and an officer at a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

The shortlist also includes Germany’s Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade) and Iran’s The Salesman (dir. Asghar Farhadi), with some hotly tipped films failing to make the cut, such as France’s submission Elles (dir. Paul Verhoeven).

See the whole list of shortlisted films here.

N.B. Don’t try to eat popcorn if you go to see Paradise — it recently came to light that Konchalovsky would like to see cinema snackers banned.