Oscar Snubs: 10 of the best films from 2021 not nominated at the 94th Academy Awards.
Despite being billed as a celebration of all kinds of filmmaking, the nominated films at the Oscars tend to only represent a small fraction of movies released each year. The academy heavily favors major studio productions with large budgets, superstar casts, and savvy PR campaigns. While nominated movies like Dune, Drive My Car, Parallel Mothers and more certainly deserve recognition, hundreds of others were excluded from the ceremony last Sunday evening. Here are ten of those movies theatrically released in 2021 that were left off of the Oscars ballot but deserve a watch regardless.
ANIMA (dir. Cao Jinling, Mongolia).
Set deep within a Mongolian forest, Cao Jinling’s story about two Ewenki (an indigenous ethnic minority within northern China) brothers is a stunning tale of family, love, and nature. Brothers Tu Tu and Linzi are exiled after killing a bear, considered taboo, even though it was done in self defense. As adults, they face another dilemma when a lumber kingpin wants their help to illegally exploit the forests they call home. Anima addresses one of the most challenging yet universal questions: What should a person do when their survival necessitates breaking a personal or cultural code of ethics, beliefs, and values?
BENEDETTA (dir. Paul Verhoeven, France).
While famously divisive auteur Paul Verhoeven’s irreverent, lewd humor remains, Benedetta is also a serious story about the politics of religion, the relationship between God and humanity, and characters who tiptoe a fine line between sexuality and spirituality. Is Benedetta a craven, power hungry manipulator? Or does she truly believe she is guided by a divine calling as she ascends the ranks of her 17th century convent? Newcomer Daphne Patakia holds her own against Charlotte Rampling and Verhoeven familiar Virginie Efira in one of the year’s best ensemble casts.
FAYA DAYI (dir. Jessica Beshir, Ethiopia).
A film in which every gorgeous black and white still deserves its own framed print, few films from last year rival Jessica Beshir’s Faya Dayi in terms of sheer beauty. Certainly, it should have been considered in the running for best cinematography. The main subject of the film is khat, a plant and stimulant used for centuries in certain Sufi Muslim religious practices. Khat also plays a major role in the economy of Ethiopia (the film was shot in and around Harar, the city Beshir grew up in before political circumstances led her family to leave when she was a teenager). Impressionistic, free flowing shots of smoke, water, and children coalesce into a psychedelic narrative of addiction, freedom, and spirituality, among other themes.
MEMORIA (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia).
Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first film shot outside of Thailand, Memoria is a story about remembrance and dislocation. Tilda Swinton plays an orchid seller visiting Colombia when she becomes haunted by a loud, recurring sound that it seems like only she can hear. In typical Weerasethakul fashion, her desire to trace its source leads to a series of encounters that test the bounds of what she previously understood to be reality. While the camera rarely changes perspective in each scene, the inventive sound design advances the narrative in a way that visual cuts and editing might in a more conventional movie. As Weerasethakul’s films reach a wider international audience, he continues to cement himself as one of today’s most unique and creative filmmakers. “Best Director” when?
PIG (dir. Michael Sarnoski, USA).
Nicolas Cage plays Rob, a truffle hunter living in the remote Oregon wilderness who is lured back to civilization (Portland) to rescue his abducted pig. As the story unfolds, we are introduced to a world that is like ours but not quite, with intimations of secret societies and codes lurking underneath the surface of bourgeois fine dining culture. As the seemingly invincible and unflappable Rob pursuing his treasured pet and companion, Cage delivers one of his finest dramatic performances in recent years in this strange fable about the passage of time.
ROCK BOTTOM RISER (dir. Fern Silva, USA).
Fern Silva’s debut feature is an experimental documentary about the clash between colonial science and research institutions and indigenous communities and cultural preservation in Hawai’i. Between footage of volcanic explosions, cosmic daydreams, and lots of vape smoke, Silva asks his audience to reflect on what it actually means for humans to try and understand the natural world around them. Come for the lava, stay for the philosophy.
TITANE (dir. Julie Ducournau, France).
Despite winning Palme D’or at the Cannes film festival, filmmaker Julie Ducournau’s second feature length was denied a nomination for best Foreign Feature at this year’s Academy Awards. The movie’s jarring shifts in tone, graphic violence, and surreal plot mean that it’s not for everyone, but its fans are ardent. Some parts of Titane I loved and some parts I… didn’t. But, I can’t deny that it was unlike any other movie I’d seen before. The most memorable scenes for me? Early on, lead actress Agathe Rousselle performs a sensual dance routine on top of a car at an auto show. Later, she recreates her dance in male drag, surrounded by a crowd of macho (homoerotic) firemen.
WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan).
Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car took home the Oscar for best foreign feature on Sunday, but less attention has been given to his second 2021 feature length, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. A triptych of shorts centered around themes of sex, jealousy, and longing, the characters alternately lie to, seduce, and caress each other, all in pursuit of their own sexual and romantic satisfaction. Sustained by its clever, revealing dialogue and conversation, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is the best screenplay Hamaguchi has penned yet.
THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) (dir. C.W. Winters and Anders Edström, Japan).
Running 8 hours long, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) by C.W. Winters and Anders Edström is not exactly Oscar-bait. But, if you have the time and patience, it more than earns its length. After a few hours I was so locked into its hypnotic pace and imagery that by the time it ended I felt like I could’ve kept watching indefinitely. The Works and Days combines elements of both fiction and documentary, interpolating real diary entries from the eponymous Shiojiri, an elderly farmer living outside Kyoto, while also featuring performances from popular actors Ryo Kase and Masahiro Motoki. Lingering on the slightest details of light, texture, and nature, the film becomes an archive documenting a rapidly altering lifestyle and landscape across five seasons.
ZOLA (dir. Janicza Bravo, USA).
In what could (and should) have been a first in the category of best adapted screenplay, writer-director Janicza Bravo and writer Jeremy O. Harris adapted one of the most popular Twitter threads of all time for the big screen. Zola (Taylour Paige) joins a sketchy crew on a Florida-bound trek that will end up testing her strength, wits, and resourcefulness, like a modern day Odysseus. With her inimitable, idiosyncratic style, Bravo manages to find humor in a harrowing road trip gone wrong. The fact that Zola didn’t receive a single Oscar nomination is one of the academy’s most egregious oversights this season.
