Latin America’s Frontrunner in Foreign Oscar Race is ‘NO’

Without question, the Latin American film with the best shot at the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar is Pablo Larrain’s No from Chile, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the brilliant young Chilean adman who helped topple the dictator Pinochet in 1988. Though Larrain’s last Oscar bid for Chile, 2008’s Tony Manero, failed to make the final five, he may have a better chance this time. No won the Art Cinema Award at its Cannes world premiere, and The Hollywood Reporter reviewer David Rooney wrote, “the nitty-gritty of the campaign’s evolution provides an engrossing narrative.” At the Telluride Film Festival, attended by the ebullient Bernal, No’s outdoor screening was interrupted by a torrential downpour – yet almost nobody left. A good sign.

On the Oct. 7 Feinberg Forecast by THR awards analyst Scott Feinberg, No is second on the list of “possibilities” for the Foreign Oscar (though far down the list from his picks of likelier winners, labeled “frontrunners” and “major threats”). Seven out of nine film pundits on the Gold Derby prediction poll put No in their top five picks for the Foreign Oscar.