In one of the bigger surprises for Tuesday’s Oscar nominations, Fatih Akin’s In the Fade was snubbed by the Academy and failed to secure a nomination for best foreign-language feature. The German thriller was a frontrunner going into the nominations, having already won Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards.
The film, a legal thriller about a women who seeks revenge after her husband and child are killed by neo-Nazi terrorists, also featured some star power in the form of Diane Kruger, who plays the lead in her first German-language role. Kruger won best actress in Cannes last year for her performance. Many also saw strong thematic links between the film and the rise of the far right in the United States in the post-Trump era, something that was thought would help the film with the Academy.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Akin said he was inspired to tell the story of In the Fade in response to a series of real-life killings by a neo-Nazi terror cell in Germany. The trial of one of the cell’s alleged masterminds is ongoing.
Critics gave In the Fade a mixed reception but the film has been a hit with German audiences, grossing more than $4.6 million locally. In the U.S., In the Fade has earned just over $100,000 for Magnolia.
Akin and producers on the film declined to comment following the Oscar nominations.
In the Fade was one of the nine foreign-language features picked to the Oscar short list but failed to make the final five, beat out by A Fantastic Woman from Chile, Lebanon’s The Insult, Russian drama Loveless, Hungary’s On Body and Soul and art satire The Square from Sweden.
