TJC Director Up for Oscar Nomination!
The director of Time of Favor, one of our feature films this month, could soon be up for an Oscar nomination! His newest film, Beaufort, has just been named Israel’s official entry to the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category.
Typically, though, the decision was surrounded with controversy.
Beaufort is actually the Israeli Academy of Film and Television’s second choice, after Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, reports the Jerusalem Post. The latter film was not eligible for the Foreign Language Film category since more than half of its dialogue is in English. The Israeli committee made an appeal to the Academy Awards to reconsider, but the decision to disqualify The Band’s Visit was confirmed.
Since Beaufort won the second highest number of votes at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, it was the next in line for the honor. However, according to a previous article in the JPost, many Israelis “believe Joseph Cedar’s film has a better chance at winning an official spot as an Oscar nominee – and ultimately the best chance at winning Best Foreign Language Film.”
While Beaufort is about an IDF unit stationed at the Beaufort outpost in Lebanon just before the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Time of Favor [HaHesder], Cedar’s first feature film — which premiered in 2000 — investigates the sometimes troubling intersection of militarism and religious extremism in the IDF’s Hesder program, whose enlistees spend part of their time in the army and the other part learning in yeshiva.
Time of Favor won several Ophir Awards and launched Cedar as one of Israel’s most important — and most controversial — new directors.
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