‘The human voice’the short film Pedro Almodovarhas passed the nominations cutoff and will continue in the fight to win the Oscar for best fiction short film in the 93rd edition of the awards, which will be held on April 25, 2021.
Starring Tilda Swinton and released in theaters on October 21, the piece became the highest grossing short film in history in Spain. In November it already exceeded 30,000 spectators and 120,000 euros in revenueof course no other short film has been programmed in up to 150 cinemas, as the one by the director from La Mancha has done.
The news came this Tuesday, when the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the works that continue in the shortlist of candidates in nine categories waiting for The final finalists will be announced on March 15. Thus, Almodóvar could win the third statuette of his career, after winning one for best foreign film, for ‘All About My Mother’ (1999) and another for best original screenplay for ‘Hable con ella’ (2003).
‘The Human Voice’ adapts in thirty minutes the original play by Jean Cocteau, which tells the story of a desperate woman waiting for her lover, who has just abandoned her, to pick up some suitcases. It is the first work that the director of ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ films in English. If selected, the man from La Mancha would return to the awards for the second consecutive year, after opting with ‘Pain and Glory’ in 2020 for the Oscar for best international film, which finally went to ‘Parasites’.
‘The Infinite Trench’, eliminated
He has had worse luck ‘The infinite trench’. The film by Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga, starring Antonio de la Torre and Belén Cuesta, has been eliminated in the race for the Oscar for best international film. The story of Higinio, a man who after the Civil War locks himself up for decades behind a false wall in his house for fear of reprisals, beat the other two shortlisted to represent Spain, ‘El hoyo’, by Galder Gaztelu. Urrutia, and ‘O Que Arde’, by Oliver Laxe, but ultimately it did not make the cut.
In this modality they have been ten works shortlisted, several of them in the Spanish language such as the Mexican ‘Ya no soyhere’, the Chilean ‘El agent mole’ and the Guatemalan ‘La Llorona’. The rest are ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ (Bosnia and Herzegovina); ‘Charlatan’ (Czech Republic); ‘Another Round’ (Denmark), ‘Two of Us’ (France); ‘Better Days’ (Hong Kong); ‘Sun Children’ (Iran); ‘Night of the Kings’ (Ivory Coast); ‘Hope’ (Norway); Collective’ (Romania), ‘Dear Comrades!’ (Russia), ‘A Sun’ (Taiwan) and ‘The Man Who Sold His Skin’ (Tunisia).
The Oscar ceremony will be marked in this edition by the limitations imposed by the pandemic of covid-19. The Hollywood Academy recently announced, however, that its intention is not to hold it virtually, but rather to have it be a live, in-person ceremony.
And with this goal in mind, the organizers are studying capacity possibilities for the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, the usual setting for the Oscars and with a capacity of 3,400 people, and health safety protocols. It has not yet been decided what security measures the Academy will adopt or how many of the nominees will be able, or will agree, to attend in person. Among the favorites for the acting awards there are quite a few veteran interpreters who are in risk groups, such as Anthony Hopkins, 82 years old; Ellen Burstyn, 88; Sophia Loren, 86; Meryl Streep, 71 years old; David Strathairn, 72; or Yuh-Jung Youn, 73 years old.