“The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” by Tran Anh Hung was chosen to represent France at the 2024 Oscars. The film was awarded at Cannes but did not obtain the Palme d’Or.
It’s an announcement that caused surprise in the movie-loving world. “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” was chosen to represent France at the next Oscars ceremony, we learned this Thursday, September 21, 2023. The feature film directed by Tran Anh Hung was thus preferred to “Anatomie of a fall”, the production of Justine Triet who had nevertheless won the Palme d’Or.
“The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” was nevertheless awarded the directing prize at the last Cannes Film Festival. This film, directed by Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, follows the romantic relationship between an outstanding cook and a famous gastronome, who bond over their mutual passion for haute cuisine and the creation of dishes, each more delicious than the other. “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” is released in theaters on November 8, 2023.
If “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” is now France’s worthy representative at the Oscars, this does not yet mean that it is in competition to win the Best Foreign Language Film award. The Academy of Oscars will announce 15 feature films selected in this category among all the candidates on December 21. Subsequently, it will be January 23, 2024 that we will know the five films in competition in this category. Voters will then be able to vote to elect the lucky winner who will be known on March 10, 2024.
Last year, “Saint-Omer” by Alice Diop, French representative at the Oscars, was not selected among the five finalists, while “Titane” (Palme d’or 2021 by Julia Ducournau), chosen in 2022 , hadn’t even made the top 15 finalists. The last French film to be selected among the five finalists for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film is “Les Misérables” by Ladj Ly, which did not win the statuette. France has not been victorious in this category since “Indochina”, winning in 1993.
