23/10/2006

Aki Kaurismäki has decided not to accept to submit his film Lights in the Dusk as Finnish candidate for this year’s Oscars nominations.

The film, which had its world premiere in Cannes last May, was chosen by a Finnish selection jury who apparently took its decision and announced it mid-September without consulting the renowned filmmaker. Kaurismäki, who wrote, directed and produced Lights in the Dusk [+see also:
trailer
film profile], has total control over his film, which is now opening across Europe (including in France this Wednesday, October 25).

Now that he has declined to enter the Oscar race and that the deadline has passed for submitting a foreign language nominee, Finland will not be represented at the Oscars, unless the foreign language committee at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences manages to convince Kaurismäki to change his mind. An unlikely scenario considering that in 2002, when the second part of the trilogy, The Man Without a Past [+see also:
trailer
film profile], was nominated in the foreign language category, the director decided to boycott the event in protest against George Bush’s foreign policy and invasion of Iraq.

Olkka Mertsola, production manager on Lights in the Dusk and a close friend of Kaurismäki’s, told the AFP press agency last week: “When The Man Without a Past was nominated, Aki decided he would not go to the ceremony or send a representative because of what was happening then in the world and because of the government in charge in the United States. But most of the problems are unchanged, so he is unable to participate this time as well”.