Scene from Footnote (Sony Classic Pictures)
With less than six days to go until the Academy Award nominees are announced, Israeli drama “Footnote” (He’arat Shulaim) is on its way to becoming one of the final five for Best Foreign Language Film Award.
“Footnote,” directed by Orthodox Jewish filmmaker Joseph Cedar, centers on the rivalry between two Talmudic scholars, Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, who are also father and son. The two possess very different approaches as to how to gain attention to their work on the Talmud, and when the Israeli Minister of Education decides to grant the much-coveted Israel Award to one of them, the conflict between the two escalates.
Cedar’s previous film, “Beaufort,” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2007 but didn’t win.
The blog hopes “Footnote” gets to be the first Israeli film to win the award. It’s like, really good.
