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Just moments ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the total number of movies that are eligible to win their Best Picture prize. This time around, there are 366 films that are in contention to take the Oscar for Best Picture. That would be the largest number for the Academy in a half century, which is an interesting quirk, considering the expanded Academy Awards eligibility this year. The list is below, but it contains all of the expected flicks, as you might imagine. Now, we just have to wait a few more weeks and see which titles are nominated for Best Picture. Then, we can whittle this list down from 366 to something less than ten. Sit tight for that… Here are all 366 films eligible for this year’s Best Picture Oscar: Absent Now the Dead Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus Alberto and the Concrete Jungle All...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday revealed the 366 feature films that are eligible for consideration at the 93rd Oscars, which are set to air April 25 live on ABC.

The total number of films is up from last year’s 344 films in contention.

This year’s list was compiled based on tweaked eligibility rules implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed the ceremony to its latest date ever. For this year, feature films had to open by February 28 in a commercial motion picture theater for a seven-day qualifying run in at least one of six metro areas: Los Angeles County, New York City, the Bay Area, Chicago, Miami and Atlanta. Drive-in theaters open nightly were included as qualifying venues, as were films intended for theatrical release but because of the lockdown made available first via streaming, VOD service or other broadcast.

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The opening scene of Dara Of Jasenovac, Serbia’s submission to the International Feature Oscar race, gives a poignant hint of the horrors to come. The setting is rural Croatia in the 1940s. A large group of Serbian women and children are being marched to a train station by armed guards. Two Croatian women work in the fields, watching them fearfully, also cautious of their own fate. One catches the eye of a woman in the line who’s holding a baby, understanding her pleading look. With one small, sad, wordless nod, an infant is left with a stranger, his mother knowing that the alternative will likely be far worse.

Directed by Peter Antonijević, Dara Of Jasenovac is full of these heartbreaking moments, where life or death decisions are made in an instant. Sometimes these are made by the Serbian prisoners trying to protect their children; others by workers in...

Shortlists to be announced on February 9.

The Academy on Thursday (January 28) published a list of 93 films eligible for international feature film Oscar category.

Algeria’s Heliopolis, about the brutal suppression by French colonial authorities of an uprising in 1945, is omitted from the list. Screen understands the national selection committee withdrew the submission.

There were also a record number of documentary submissions – 238 compared to the previous high of 170 – in light of amended eligibility rules this season due to the pandemic, and a reduced field of 27 animation contenders.

The shortlists will be announced on February 9. The 93rd annual Academy Awards are scheduled...

The number of films available to Oscar voters in a screening room devoted to the Best Picture category hit the 200 mark on Wednesday, which means that $2.5 million has entered the Academy coffers from films paying $12,500 each to be represented in the screening room.

The members-only Academy Screening Room hit the milestone with the addition of more than a dozen movies this week, including Fisher Stevens’ “Palmer,” Lee Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” John Lee Hancock’s “The Little Things,” the Russo brothers’ “Cherry,” Josh Trank’s “Capone,” the documentary “Coup 53,” the Studio Ghibli animated film “Earwig and the Witch,” the international films “Funny Boy” and “Bacarau” (neither eligible in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category) and some off-the-wall selections, including “Snake White – Love Endures” and “Soorarai Pottru.”

Other late additions to the screening room have included “Minari,” “Promising Young Woman,” “The White Tiger” and “Cherry,” which were not added until January.

Isn’t it long past time that there was an honest discussion about why there are so many Holocaust films? Unquestionably some meet the challenge posed by the injunction “never forget,” but too many others exist because the market has proven that the Holocaust sells. The movies falling into this latter category trivialize as they sensationalize, fiddling on heart strings with a facile bow whose chords jump between lurid and saccharine. A subset within this group folds more troubling objectives into their cynical understanding of the market, using the Shoah to push agendas that have little to do with comprehending the unfathomable.

It’s a testament to the cravenness of the Holocaust industry that an undisguised piece of Serbian nationalist propaganda like Peter (Predrag) Antonijević’s “Dara of Jasenovac,” dressed up in concentration camp clothing, can find distribution outside its native land. Less surprising is that it’s been submitted for Oscar consideration.