She may be Spanish and whatever they want – formally she is – but in Uruguay it is evident that we feel The Snow Society as your own. It is a Uruguayan story, you can hear the accents of the country – although many of its protagonists are Argentine – and, at some point, it caused a kind of reconciliation with a national fact against which a good part of the orientals, at some point, were a little tired. To use a euphemism.
That is why the possibility that it is nominated for an Oscar, or several, has a special pleasure.
The film is currently nominated for Best international film in Spain and managed to get into the short list of selected films. Next Tuesday the 23rd it will be known whether she will finally be nominated among the five final candidates or not. On the other hand, the film may also be among those nominated for Best Makeup, Best Original Music and in the category of Special effects. Maybe, if you’re lucky, to some more category.
In that sense, the enthusiasm can be understood. In Uruguay we have not had much connection with Hollywood’s biggest prize, but there are some dalliances that are worth rescuing. And we have a statuette, of course. And the enumeration of our golden achievements, then, begins with him, with Jorge and the light on the other side of the river.
The Oscar for Best Original Song goes to Jorge Drexler
February 2005. Our greatest Oscar-Hollywood moment, the moment when Jorge Drexler He took revenge on the Academy for not letting him sing his own creation on stage, Across the riverwhich he had composed for the film Motorcycle Diaries and that it was nominated for Best Song that year.
Jorge Drexler with his Oscar
Drexler had to smoke Antonio Banderas destroying his song along with Carlos Santana who did not stop improvising at the wrong time with the electric guitar, but when he went on stage to look for his prize, the only golden statuette that Uruguay has won so far, he gave one of the best acceptance speeches ever: he sang a cappella for a little while and then “bye, thank you“Thank you, bye.” Oh, and he knelt before a slightly uncomfortable Prince who handed him the Oscar and left through the back door.
The Uruguayan film that was not actually Uruguayan and was disqualified
In 1993 something curious happened: a “Uruguayan” film was nominated and then removed from the official list. At that time the selection processes were a little more lax and the filmmaker Adolfo Aristarainone of the most famous in Argentine cinema, was a little angry that his film was not chosen A place in the world as the representative of her country. So he introduced her as Uruguayan. How did she do it? Appealing to a legal loophole that supposedly allowed it as his wife, Uruguayan by birth, was one of the scriptwriters and also in charge of the film’s costume direction.
A place in the world
What happened was that, once nominated in the shortlist and the “deception” was concealed, a Madrid journalist discovered the situation and the Academy withdrew the film. Aristarain complained and wanted to sue the institution for “breaching the contract”, but there was no case: A place in the world, which was actually an Argentine film, was left out of the call. The Academy adjusted its rules a bit and, presumably, those things don’t happen anymore.
The Uruguayan voters of the Academy
We can say that, in some sense, we are “close” to the Academy with the Uruguayans who, by being nominated or having been invited, are part of the Academy and can vote each year for their favorite candidates. Currently there are six that can do so: Drexlerfor having won the statuette, the filmmaker Cesar Charlonecinematographers Bárbara Álvarez and Pedro Luque —who, coincidence or not, is director of photography for The Snow Society—, and the producers Fernando Epstein and Mariela Besuievsky.
Pedro Luque
The night of 12 years and the feeling of almost almost
The last time that the possibility of Uruguay achieving some type of nomination was more or less feasible was with The night of 12 yearsthe film by Álvaro Brechner that he adapted Memories of the dungeonthe book by Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro and Mauricio Rosencof, in 2019.
The night of 12 years
In reality there was never any certainty that it would be nominated for Best International Film, apart from being the one nominated by Uruguay in a procedure that is carried out year after year in all countries with trained cinematography, but due to the budget it managed, the type of story it told, the weight of the figures represented – it was a film with José Mujica as a character, no more, no less – the acclaim of critics and the public, the presence of Netflix and the top actors -Chino Darín, Antonio de la Torre, among others—it seemed like we could get the nomination. I do not pass. And we continue waiting.
2024-01-18 12:30:47
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