The 88th Academy Awards ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on February 28th, and the nominees were announced in Los Angeles today by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, as well as directors Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee, and actor John Krasinski. The debut feature film of Magyar director László Nemes, Son of Saul, earned a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will honor its winners in 24 categories.
Son of Saul is featured among the five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, but just this past weekend the Hungarian Holocaust drama won the Golden Globe in the same category, making it the frontrunner to win the Oscar as well. So far, only one Hungarian film received an Academy Award, in 1982: the feature Mephisto by István Szabó. In 1989, another Hungarian film was nominated for an Academy Award, titled Hanussen. Son of Saul won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film earlier this week, won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and sold more than 100,000 tickets in Hungarian cinemas by last Wednesday – which is regarded as an extraordinary success among Hungarian films.
Looking ahead, Nemes confirmed his plans to come home to Budapest along with the Son of Saul team of filmmakers to create their next movie, a World War I-era “dark fairy tale” to be set in Budapest with many scenes of Hungary’s capital shot on location in varied districts; casting is currently underway, including for the female lead character named Éva. Meanwhile, Son of Saul will again be shown in numerous Budapest cinemas beginning today.
