We begin this year’s Path to Oscar category analyses with one of the few categories a guild organization doesn’t reflect/impact. In this case, we’ll be on our own to read the precursor tea leaves and make a choice based on that.

Best International Feature

Winner Predictions

Io Capitano
Perfect Days
Society of the Snow
The Teachers’ Lounge
The Zone of Interest WLPPTL

Runner-Up Predictions

Society of the Snow TL
The Teachers’ Lounge WLPP

(color and symbol key at bottom of page)

Wesley Lovell: With guidance suggesting Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest are the dominant foreign-language titles of the year and with Anatomy of a Fall not in the running, The Zone of Interest wins by default. Even if the other titles were in the race, Zone would likely be unbeatable. To that end, the most likely runner up is The Teachers’ Lounge, which was the most acclaimed of the remaining four titles.
Pete Patrick: Without Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives in contention, this should be an easy win for The Zone of Interest. There won’t be any surprise here, but since I have to name a runner-up, I would say that The Teachers’ Lounge comes the closest.
Thomas La Tourrette: This seems predestined to go to The Zone of Interest. It has won by far the most precursor awards of any of the nominated films, and having several other nominations including best picture and adapted screenplay basically guarantees it the win. Unfortunately, I did not find it that exciting a film. It felt cool and distancing, but one should never vote against a Holocaust film to win. Now if France had put forward Anatomy of a Fall as their choice for International Film, it would be quite a different race. And I am not sure which film might have won. However, France put up The Taste of Things which sounds like it is a very successful film on its own, but it did not catch the public’s attention the same way, nor was it even nominated. The Teacher’s Lounge was successful to a point, but the ending negated so much of the tension of the film as to leave the audience wondering what the point of the film was. Much more gripping was Society of the Snow. It does have one other Oscar nomination, which could in some years help it to win, but nothing will stop The Zone of Interest from winning this.

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