Riva, known to French film fans for movies like "Hiroshima Mon Amour," capped a 55-year career with "Amour."
COLOGNE, Germany — Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner Amour will be Austria’s entry for the 2013 Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Austrian trade association FAMA picked the French-language feature to represent the country in the Oscar race. The drama stars veteran French actors Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a elderly couple whose love is put to the test when the wife is struck down by a stroke. Isabelle Huppert, who starred in Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), plays their daughter.
Haneke’s last film, the period drama The White Ribbon, which also won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, received an Academy Award nomination in 2009. But that film represented Germany at the Oscars, something that angered many in Austria, who had wanted to nominate it themselves.
As an Austrian filmmaker who often shoots outside his country, and regularly in French, Haneke finds his films being claimed by multiple territories come award season.
Sony Pictures Classics, which also released The White Ribbon, has Amour for the U.S. and plans to bow the film on a platform, Oscar-qualifying, release this December. The film screened at Telluride and will unspool in the Festival Masters series in Toronto.
