"Mustang" made it.

Foreign Language Film nominations[*] for 2015 are being determined in two phases.

The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based Academy members, screened the original submissions in the category between mid-October and December 14.  The group’s top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist. Although a Los Angeles theatrical release is not required for eligibility for the Best Foreign Language Film Award itself, it is a prerequisite for consideration for Academy Awards in other categories.

The shortlist will be winnowed down to the category’s five nominees by specially invited committees in New York, Los Angeles and London.  They will spend Friday, January 8, through Sunday, January 10, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.

The 88th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 14, 2016, at 5:30 a.m. PT at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Mavi Boncuk |

France, "Mustang,"[1] Deniz Gamze Ergüven, director;
Colombia, "Embrace of the Serpent," Ciro Guerra, director;
Denmark, "A War," Tobias Lindholm, director;
Hungary, "Son of Saul," László Nemes, director;
Jordan, "Theeb," Naji Abu Nowar, director.

[1] Mustang Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (PG)

Five young sisters living in a coastal Turkish village on the Black Sea are placed under the tyrannical regime of traditional morality by their guardians, in the poignant, award-winning first feature by Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

The feature debut of Turkish filmmaker Deniz Gamze Ergüven is a sensitive and powerful portrait of sisterhood and burgeoning sexuality. In a remote Turkish coastal village on the Black Sea, five young sisters live under the guardianship of their grandmother and uncle after the deaths of their parents. When a neighbour witnesses the girls innocently playing on the beach, she reports this "scandalous" behaviour to their guardians, who institute a tyrannical regime of both physical and emotional imprisonment. All "instruments of corruption" and pop-culture artifacts are removed from the house, girly outfits are replaced with formless brown dresses, and, following a brief escape to an all-female soccer match, bars are installed on the windows and gates erected at the home's entrance. As the eldest sisters are subjected to virginity tests and married off one by one, the younger sisters look on in fear and resolve not to succumb to the same fate. Co-written by Ergüven and noted writer-director Alice Winocour (Disorder), Mustang is "[a] beautifully mounted debut … the director proves especially skilled with her cast of newcomers[,] whose powerful individualism as well as their vibrant bond together are perfect vessels for the script's message" (Variety).

Credits
Director(s): Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Rating: PG
Language: Turkish
Year: 2015
Country: Turkey/France/Germany/Qatar
Runtime: 94 minutes

[*] The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, or Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.

When the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929 to honor films released in 1927/28, there was no separate category for foreign language films. Between 1947 and 1955, the Academy presented Special/Honorary Awards to the best foreign language films released in the United States. These Awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no Award was given in 1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the 1956 (29th) Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.


Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language Film Award is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winning film's director, but is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. Over the years, the Best Foreign Language Film Award and its predecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the 67 Awards handed out by the Academy since 1947 to foreign language films, fifty-five have gone to European films,[2] six to Asian films,[3] three to African films and three to films from the Americas.