--- title: The Oscars 2015: Here's What You Need to Know About Best Foreign Film description: Two movies were the very first from their nations to get nominated canonical: https://time.com/3669005/oscars-2015-best-foreign-film/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-15T15:58:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:36:17.845Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Oscars 2015: Here's What You Need to Know About Best Foreign Film og:description: Two movies were the very first from their nations to get nominated og:url: https://time.com/3669005/oscars-2015-best-foreign-film/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7b10716d3e037e1/698778723c16390c81450ffb/ida.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Ida og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Oscars 2015: Here's What You Need to Know About Best Foreign Film twitter:description: Two movies were the very first from their nations to get nominated twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf7b10716d3e037e1/698778723c16390c81450ffb/ida.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Everything You Need to Know About the Best Foreign Film Nominees > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Jan 15, 2015 3:58 PM UTC  Agata Trzebuchowska as Ida Lebenstein in Ida Agata Trzebuchowska as Ida Lebenstein in IdaMusic Box Films  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Jan 15, 2015 3:58 PM UTC Every so often, there’s a breakout hit in the Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film category — a _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ or _Amelie_ or _Amour_ that’s widely seen and discussed among the public. This is _not_ one of those years. Though the Polish film _Ida_ has done far better than anyone involved had expected it, it hasn’t yet risen to the level of prominence or viewership of _American Sniper_ or _The Theory of Everything_ or _Birdman_; the other four nominees are relatively obscure stateside. But that shouldn’t be the case. In a stunningly monochromatic year at the Oscars, one whose acting nominees are, to a one, white and in which female writers and directors were ignored, the foreign language category provides Oscar its only hint of diversity. It’s worth catching up on the films in play to get ahead in your Oscar pool and to, potentially, find one of Oscar’s gems hidden in plain sight. **_Ida_** This film, directed by the Polish auteur Pawel Pawlikowski (who’d previously been best-known for work in English, including _My Summer of Love_), tells the story of a novice nun who discovers that her family had been Jews. She’d been left at a convent in the hope that she might survive the Holocaust; in possession of this knowledge, she sets out to discover more about her heritage with a depressive, alcoholic aunt. It’s an austere film, shot in chilly black-and-white (it’s also nominated for Best Cinematography), with a stripped-down eighty-minute running time that leaves little room for extraneous dialogue and much for ambiguity. _Ida_ is currently streaming on Amazon. **_Wild Tales_** This Argentinian anthology pulls together six unrelated short stories of vengeance; when it played at the Cannes Film Festival, [one critic wrote](http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-wild-tales-1201184260/), “Each episode is a variation on the ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’ theme, with put-upon souls reaching their limits of tolerance in gleefully destructive ways.” The film comes by its baroque expressiveness honestly: It’s produced by melodrama director Pedro Almodóvar and his brother Agustin. It’s set to be released Feb. 20 in the U.S. **_Leviathan_** A movie that depicts the casual indignities of life in modern Russia isn’t the sort one would expect to have been funded by the Russian government. But _Leviathan_, a retelling of the Book of Job that hinges on a small-town mayor’s corruption, was paid for in part by Vladimir Putin’s Ministry of Culture. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev [has outright denied](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/29/leviathan-russian-cannes-movie-putin-attack) that his movie has anything to say about the state of modern Russia, but many argue the proof of his dissent is in the film itself. _Leviathan_ is currently playing in limited release. **_Tangerines_** This movie is Estonia’s first nominee for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and tells the story of the war in Georgia in the early 1990s, following the story of an older man who’s refused to flee the war in order to harvest his tangerine crop. _Tangerines_ played at multiple U.S. film festivals in 2014; no word on plans for a wide release. **_Timbuktu_** It’s another first: _Timbuktu_ got the country of Mauritania its first nomination in this category. The story is, like every other nominee save _Wild Tales_, concerned with sweeping political changes and their impact on the individual: It looks at the effects of the brief occupation of Timbuktu by the militant Islamist group Ansar Dine. It’s scheduled to be released in the U.S. Jan. 28. _Read next:_ [_Here’s Where You Can Watch Oscar-Nominated Movies Online_](http://time.com/3669132/oscar-movies-online/?xid=time%5Freadnext) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3669005/oscars-2015-best-foreign-film/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3669005/oscars-2015-best-foreign-film/"},"headline":"Everything You Need to Know About the Best Foreign Film Nominees","datePublished":"2015-01-15T15:58:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:36:17.845Z","description":"Not familiar with the Mauritanian and Estonian films nominated for Oscars this year? 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