Crossing Borders Is Part of the Deal

Foreign film was once ruled by directors who created indelible images of their homeland. Think of Italy’s Federico Fellini or France’s Francois Truffaut or Japan’s Akira Kurosawa. Though their films are universal in their appeal, each director captured his country’s essence for the world to see.

But this year’s Oscar nominations for foreign language films symbolize something else again--the internationalization of national film.

With the exception of Spain’s nomination--Pedro Almodovar’s award-winning “All About My Mother”--all of this year’s films are set outside of the director’s homeland or carry themes not specific to their country’s national identity. In the past, there have been examples of films and directors that venture outside of their home territory. However, there has never been such a collection of foreign film nominees representing the diversity of international stories and filmmakers.

The nominees include:

* “Caravan,” Nepal’s first-ever nomination. The film, set in the highest reaches of the Himalayas, was directed by a Frenchman, led by a French crew, and cast Tibetans speaking their native language.

* “East-West” from France is set in Russia, directed by a Frenchman, co-written by Russians, and stars a French and Russian cast.

* The United Kingdom’s entry, “Solomon and Gaenor,” was directed by a Brit and set in Wales with actors speaking Yiddish, English and Welsh.

* “Under the Sun,” Sweden’s entry, was directed by an Englishman with an entirely Swedish cast.

World cinema--particularly in the European Union--has been increasingly influenced by the rise in international co-productions to finance films. “Caravan,” for example, is a French/British/Swiss/Nepalese co-production and “East-West” is a French/Russian co-production.

“‘International co-productions and story ideas are becoming more and more prevalent,” said Patrick Stockstill, Academy Awards coordinator and academy historian.

The directors of this year’s films are bound together by their lust for adventure and curiosity about the world outside of their immediate borders.

“I’m not a typical French,” said “Caravan’s” director, Eric Valli. “I get bored within my borders. In the Himalayas there is still a sense of the unknown and big space--like in America 100 years ago.”

Sometimes the blurring of borders in film can make entries confusing. In 1988, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences disqualified the Netherlands entry “The Vanishing” because a majority of the dialogue was in French and the story was French, said Stockstill. However, the film was set in the Netherlands.

That decision caused such an uproar that the academy changed its foreign film qualification rules to allow more flexibility, Stockstill said.

Still, when the late, legendary director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s native Poland submitted his film “Red” as its official entry in 1994, the academy rejected it because the film was set in France and was predominantly in French. France entered a different film that year, Stockstill said.

“One of the things we spend a certain amount of time on in the [foreign film selection] committee is deciding if a movie qualifies from its submitted country,” said producer Mark Johnson, chairman of the academy’s foreign film committee. “We are very sensitive to the fact that there are so few movies that are 100% made up of people from that country. Our goal is to have a movie qualify, not to reject it. But it’s hardly black and white.”

U.S. Also Looks Outside for Money

With its gigantic entertainment industry, the United States is one of the few countries least inspired by the outside world when looking for story ideas, Johnson said.

“We are such a big country that we only seem to know about America. We are very provincial in that way,” said Johnson, who grew up in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish. “The rest of the world is very aware of what is going on not only in America but also other countries.”

But when it comes to money, even U.S. filmmakers are exploring. With movie-making becoming more expensive, outside financing has become very important, Johnson said.

For example, Steve Reuther with Europe’s Canal Plus, co-financed Kevin Costner’s romantic drama “Message in a Bottle” last year; Australia’s Village Road Show was Warner Bros.’ financial partner on “The Matrix” and “Analyze This.”

Many of the directors of the foreign film nominees share an insatiable curiosity for regions and people they heard about growing up. Regis Wargnier (“East-West”), for instance, longed to understand more about Indochina (now Vietnam) and Algeria as a child because his father was in the military fighting France’s colonial wars.

“When you are a kid and you want to understand why your father is away, you wonder, ‘Where is Indochine and why do we have to fight there?’ ” Wargnier said. “Gradually, even if you don’t realize it, you get interested in this stuff.”

The directors say they often felt like foreigners in their countries of birth. And so, some have relocated, adopting new countries, languages and ways of life. Others have explored within their own countries, unearthing stories not usually associated with national identity. The idea of national borders is increasingly irrelevant with today’s growing internationalization of ideas and commerce.

‘We Belong to the Same World’

“We belong to two different worlds,” said “Caravan’s” Valli, referring to the Tibetans and the French. “But yet we belong to the same world--the same things make us cry and make us laugh.”

On a whim, Valli moved to Nepal 17 years ago. He lived among the Dolpo (the name of the Tibetan tribe) villagers he cast in his movie for two years before he began filming. He used the language, customs and people from that remote region of Nepal to chronicle what Valli calls “a sort of western--a Tibetan western--a universal saga that tells the story of power, pride and glory that could have taken place in the seas of Japan, the plains of Normandy or deep in Texas.”

Still, his movie, which took nine months to film, is uniquely Tibetan.

“I didn’t realize that there were such incredible places in the Himalayas where Tibetan culture remained totally untouched by the Chinese or the tourist invasion,” said Valli, who learned the Dolpo’s native language. “The film is basically a love story between the Dolpo and myself.”

Love Story of a Russian Jew in Wales

“Solomon and Gaenor’s” director Paul Morrison made his film in part as a quest to find some roots in his native England. The film, spoken in Yiddish, Welsh and English, is a tragic love story between a Welsh woman and a Russian immigrant Jew who meet in a tiny Welsh village in the early 1900s. Afraid of the consequences if Gaenor were to discover he was not Christian, Solomon changes his name, keeping his Jewish identity a secret until he can no longer deny it.

“All of my stories seem to be about people searching for an identity or people in conflict about identity,” said Morrison, who, as a Jew in England, never identified with the Anglocentric culture of his native country. “You never felt quite that you were accepted but you had to fit in. You had to be a good Englishman to be accepted.”

While reporting for a documentary, Morrison was surprised to discover that there was a small community of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in Wales around 1911 seeking jobs. Their fate was similar to many of the Jewish travelers of the time, where they built their own community and became the town’s merchants and peddlers. In economic downturns, however, anti-Semitism forced them out.

“Acceptance is one of the themes of our time--particularly in Europe where there were so many wars over a national identity,” he said. “We have been through the millennium of persecution.”

English director Colin Nutley, who directed “Under the Sun,” found his destiny in Sweden. He was sent to Sweden on assignment by British television. He fell in love with the country, and in 1991 moved there permanently.

“I’m an Englishman, but I found myself much more [at home] in Sweden,” said Nutley, who married a Swede and whose children speak both English and Swedish at home. “I’m writing and making films with the spirit of my old country and mixing in the heart of my new country.”

Ironically, he has been called the most Swedish of Swedish directors, winning best film at the Swedish Film Awards for his 1992 hit “House of Angels.” Nutley takes an everyman’s approach to storytelling, with his movies illustrating Sweden as he sees it from an outsider’s perspective.

“So many Swedish films are heavy and dig deep into dark emotions,” said Nutley, calling while on vacation in Dubai, in the Middle East. “That’s fine for the filmmaker but people need warmth and to feel good about life. My films have a bit of an Englishman in them. I think we [the English] have a much lighter kind of view about what this world is about than the Swedes. I love this country and so my films are full of love for the Swedish countryside and its people.”