Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s feature The Man Who Sold His Skin has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards.
Ben Hania’s nomination comes alongside Another Round from Denmark from director Thomas Vinterberg. Vinterberg was nominated for Best Director, making his film a clear favourite for the International Feature Film category.
The film stars Yahya Mahayni, who plays a Syrian refugee whose body becomes an art piece, inspired by a man who was tattooed by a Belgian artist named Wim Delvoye in 2006 in a work entitled “Tim”. It won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival last fall.
Ben Hania’s previous films include 2006’s Me, My Sister and the Thing, 2013’s Woden Hand and Challat of Tunis, 2016’s Zaineb Hates the Snow, and 2017’s Beauty and the Dogs.
Also nominated at this year’s Oscars was another Arab woman, Farah Nabulsi, for her short film “The Present”.
Nabulsi’s first effort as a director, the Present centers around a father and daughter who go out to buy the girl’s mother a present, a simple task that proves difficult due to the various checkpoints they must go through across Palestine’s West Bank.
Nabulsi has produced four previous short films all centering around Palestine. Her other films include “Today They Took My Son”, following a mother who traumatized after her young son was taken away, as well as “Oceans of Injustice” and “Nightmare of Gaza”, all exploring different facets of life for Palestinians. Nabulsi wrote and produced her first three shorts.
The Present was produced by Philistine Films, who will also produce Nabulsi’s upcoming feature debut that will also star The Present star Saleh Bakri. The film is set to begin production later in 2021, with an Arab and Western cast currently being courted.
The ceremony with the ceremony coming on April 25.
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