Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, a drama about a family on a ski vacation caught in an avalanche, will be Sweden’s candidate for the 2015 best foreign-language film Oscar.
The drama premiered to critical raves in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar this year and won the section’s jury prize. It bows for North American audiences at the Toronto Film Festival later this week.
This is the second time Sweden has picked one of Ostlund’s films to represent the country at the Academy Awards. His drama Involuntary, which Sweden put up as a foreign-language candidate in 2009, did not get an Oscar nomination. The last time Sweden won the foreign-language Oscar was in 2004 for Kay Pollak‘s As It Is in Heaven.
This year’s foreign-language race is already heating up, with several prominent contenders, including from Germany and Turkey, already announced.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will name the Best Foreign Language nominees on Jan. 15, 2015, and the winner will be announced at the 2015 Oscars on Feb. 22.
Twitter: @sroxborough
