List of Sri Lankan submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

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Sri Lanka is one of over one-hundred countries which have submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. [1]

Sri Lanka Island country in South Asia

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honorary organization of film professionals

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy's corporate management and general policies are overseen by a Board of Governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches.

Contents

Though Sri Lanka has a relatively prolific film industry, they have only entered the Foreign Oscar competition twice.

Sri Lankan cinema encompasses the films made in Sri Lanka. It is a fledgling industry that has struggled to find a footing since its inauguration in 1947 with Kadawunu Poronduwa produced by S. M. Nayagam of Chitra Kala Movietone. Sri Lankan films are usually made in the Sinhala language, as well as in the Tamil language.

Submissions

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956. The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. [1] Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Sri Lanka for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.

Secret ballot voting style that makes each vote anonymous

The secret ballot, also known as Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous, forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.

Year
(Ceremony)		Film title used in nominationOriginal titleLanguageDirectorResult
2003
(76th) 		Mansion by the Lake වෑකන්ද වලව්ව Sinhala Lester James Peries Not Nominated
2009
(82nd) 		The Road from Elephant Pass අලිමංකඩ Sinhala, Tamil Chandran Rutnam Not Nominated

Sri Lanka's initial Oscar submission, Mansion by the Lake, is a Sinhala language drama, loosely based on Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard . The plot revolves around a Sri Lankan noble family, now penniless, who return to their traditional family manse in Sri Lanka after years in England. Six years later, the country entered The Road from Elephant Pass, a thriller based on an acclaimed Sri Lankan novel by Nihal De Silva. The film is a thriller about a Sri Lankan military officer and a female LTTE rebel captive who are forced to work together during an escape through the jungle. Sri Lanka has not submitted a film since 2009.

Sinhala language Indo-Aryan language spoken in Sri Lanka

Sinhala, also known as Sinhalese, is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about four million. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sinhala is written using Sinhala script, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba script.

Anton Chekhov Russian dramatist, author and physician

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

<i>The Cherry Orchard</i> Play by Anton Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in 1903, it was first published by Znaniye, and came out as a separate edition later that year in Saint Petersburg, via A.F. Marks Publishers. It opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov described the play as a comedy, with some elements of farce, though Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. Since its first production, directors have contended with its dual nature. It is often identified as one of the three or four outstanding plays by Chekhov, along with The Seagull, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Rule Thirteen: Special Rules for the Foreign Language Film Award". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 22 August 2013. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
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