On Friday, September 20, the selection committee reached its decision: Les Misérables by Ladj Ly has been selected as the official candidate representing France in the Best International Feature Film category for the Oscars 2020.
Les Misérables is the official French submission for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2020. In May this year, the debut feature by Ladj Ly received the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere. It has since participated in international film festivals, including Durban (where it received the Best Film and Best Screenplay awards), Zurich, Shanghai, Munich, Melbourne, Sarajevo, Athens, Toronto, Saint Petersburg, Los Angeles, and San Sebastian, among others.
At the beginning of the week, alongside Les Misérables two other features had been selected by a new committee of French film industry professionals for the short list: Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma and Proxima by Alice Winocour.
The members of the gender-balanced committee responsible for selecting this year's French contender were directors Pierre Salvadori and Danièle Thompson, producers Jean Bréhat and Rosalie Varda, and exporters Muriel Sauzay and Agathe Valentin. Thierry Frémaux (general delegate of the Festival de Cannes), Alain Terzian (president of the Académie des César), and Serge Toubiana (president of UniFrance) take part in the vote as ex officio members.
A few weeks before the Oscars ceremony, which will take place on February 9, 2020, in Hollywood, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will announce the definitive list of five films that will compete for the Oscar for Best International Feature. To date, 65 films have been submitted to the Academy by their respective countries to be in the running for this prestigious award.
