The International Press Academy (IPA) announced its nominations for the 22nd Annual Satellite Awards in Motion Pictures and Television on Wednesday. Nepali feature film ‘White Sun’ (Seto Surya) has been nominated for the Best International Film award.
The film written and directed by Deepak Rauniyar is competing with seven other films, including Cambodian film ‘First They Killed My Father’, directed by Angelina Jolie. The Divine Order (Switzerland), The Square (Sweden), Loveless (Russia), In The Fade (Germany), Foxtrot (Israel) and BPM (France) are the other six films nominated in this category.
Interestingly; all of these eight films are competing with each other in the Oscar 2018 race as well, for the Best Foreign Language Film award. A total of 92 films from around the world have been submitted this year; and only five of them will be nominated for the Oscar.
White Sun; starring Dayahang Rai, Rabindra Singh Baniya and Asha Magrati had its world premiere in the Horizons section at the 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival; and was released in Nepal in December last year. The film that has won several awards at various international film festivals including Inter-film award at the Venice Film Festival and Best Film Award at the Singapore International Film Festival; is set to be re-released in Kathmandu on December 8.
The IPA selects nominees from domestic and international submissions for 32 categories: 19 Motion Picture and 13 Television. Christopher Nolan’s war epic ‘Dunkirk’ and Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy ‘The Shape of Water’ are the top nominees for the Satellite Awards this year with 11 and 10 nominations, respectively.
‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ and ‘Lady Bird’ with six each; and ‘Darkest Hour’, ‘Get Out’, ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’. and ‘Blade Runner 2049’ with four each; are the other films with multiple nods. Honorary awards to writer-director Greta Gerwig, the cast of ‘Mudbound’ and visual effects artist Robert Legato, among others have also been announced.
The Satellite Awards will take place on February 10, 2018 in Los Angeles.