Beaufort Castle Meets Kodak Theatre

This year's Oscar nominations have been announced. The category I'm excited about is best foreign film, where the Israeli film Beaufort has been nominated. The movie tells the story of Israeli soldiers guarding Beaufort Castle in Southern Lebanon shortly before the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000. The film currently has an 85% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 11 positive reviews and 2 negative ones.

Interestingly, though, Beaufort was not supposed to be Israel's candidate for the foreign film award. The winner of the best film Ophir Award, the Israeli Oscar, was "The Band's Visit", which tells the story of an Egyptian police band that gets lost in Israel and winds up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The Israelis and Egyptians speak English to each other, and with more than 40% of the dialogue in English the film was disqualified, and the second place finisher, Beaufort, was nominated instead. "The Band's Visit", by the way, has a 100% positive rating on RT.

The other nominees in the foreign film category are “The Counterfeiters” from Austria, “Katyn” from Poland, “Mongol” from Kazakhstan and “12″ from Russia.