Loveless: Russian Oscars committee picks Zvyagintsev film for Academy Awards

Director Andrey Zvyaginstev’s new film Loveless was selected by the Russian Oscars committee for the country’s bid for the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film nomination.

The film focuses on a couple in the midst of a divorce who must come together to search for their son who has suddenly gone missing.

The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is given to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue track. Every country is invited to submit one film for the nomination, and before the submission was officially announced yesterday, Alexey Uchitel’s controversial film Matilda was considered to be one of the candidates for Russia’s nomination.

Earlier this year Loveless was premiered at the 70th Cannes Film Festival where it also won the jury prize. Zvyagintsev’s two previous films, Elena and Leviathan, also won accolades at Cannes, with Leviathan winning the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 2015 Golden Globes and being nominated for the Academy Award in 2015. The director has also previously been invited to sit on the Oscars’ jury.