Italy, Iceland, Estonia, and Slovakia Pick Oscar Entries

Italy has selected the Taviani Brothers' Caesar Must Die (2012), starring Cosimo Rega, Salvatore Striano and Giovanni Arcuri, to represent it at the Academy Awards early next year. Iceland has chosen acclaimed director Baltasar Kormakur's The Deep (2012), starring Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jóhann G. Jóhannsson and Þorbjörg Helga Þorgilsdóttir. Estonia and Slovakia will be represented by Toomas Hussar's Mushrooming (2012), starring Hendrik Toompere Jr., Hilje Murel and Elina Reinold, and Iveta Grófová's Made in Ash (2012), starring Dorotka Billa, Maria Billa and Jarka Bucincova.

Caesar Must Die

Winner of Golden Bear Award for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. A unique blend of narrative and documentary (whilst the film is fully scripted, all the inmates elect to use their real names and recite their own stories when they are introduced at rehearsals), Caesar Must Die takes audiences behind prison walls to explore the porous boundaries between performance and life.



The Deep

The Deep premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It is based on an astonishing true story: On a cold night in March 1984, a few miles off the south coast of Iceland, a fishing boat sank with all its men. One of the crew members miraculously survived. After six hours in the ocean, the exhausted young hulk, played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, washed ashore, only to find himself on a deadly lava field.

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Mushrooming

Politician Aadu and his wife set out to pick mushrooms on a day when he gets a call from a journalist confronting him with regard to suspected corruption. By coincidence the married couple find themselves in a car with a pompous rock idol named Zäk. After discovering that the spot his wife has chosen to pick mushrooms is full of vacationers, Aadu decides to find a quieter place. The woods where he ultimately ends up, however, are perhaps too deep and inhospitable, and finding a way out may not be easy…The black comedy with touches of political satire aims at the often unscrupulous behavior of contemporary politicians and media stars on the way to power and popularity.



Made in Ash

A Romany girl named Dorota has just graduated from high school and she's eager for life to begin. In Eastern Slovakia where she lives, however, happiness is not just waiting around the corner. So with a heavy heart she bids farewell to her boyfriend and, like so many others from her region, heads for work in the Western Bohemian town of Aš. The small border town with its Czech-German textile factory has become the hope of scores of Slovaks and Ukrainians looking for a better livelihood. But beyond the wages, such as they are, Aš can only promise her assembly line drudgery, long shifts, and unappealing accommodations. Like her peers, Dorota just wants to have fun and enjoy life a little.…