Triangle of Sadness makes history for Sweden with triple Oscar nominations

Just a day after his glorious six national Guldbagge wins for Triangle of Sadness, including Best Film, Östlund scored in the heaviest categories of the 95th Oscars race.
The film was hotly tipped for a nod in Best Original Screenplay, but the double Palme d’or winner also made it into the premium Best Director spot where he will compete against Martin McDonald (The Banshee of Inisherin), Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Todd Field (Tár) and Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans).

Triangle of Sadness produced by Erik Hemmendorff and Philippe Bober, also reached the sky with a Best Film nod. It will run against a wide range of titles, from the blockbusters Avatar: The Way of Water by James Cameron, Elvis by Baz Luhrmann, Top Gun: Maverick by Joseph Kosinski, to the break-out indie sci-fi adventure Everything Everywhere All at Once, Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, the immersive dramas Tár, Women Talking by Sarah Polley, Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin, and Netflix’s German-language WW1 drama All Quiet on the Western Front by Edward Berger.

Last time Östlund was Oscar-nominated was in 2018 with his earlier Palme d’or winning film The Square, vying for Best International Feature.

So far, Plattform Produktion hasn’t posted a YouTube video showing Östlund and his team’s reaction to the Oscar nods. Five years ago, the company created a cast & crew reaction video to The Square’s nomination - see here - as a sequel to the famous live streaming of Östlund and Hemmendorff’s reactions to their Oscar nod snub in 2015 for Force Majeure, which went viral - see here.

Triangle of Sadness was supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond, alongside the second biggest Nordic entry in the Oscars’ race: the Danish documentary A House Made of Splinters by Simon Lereng Wilmont.

“It is really great to see these two strong and relevant fiction and documentary voices nourished in their home countries and in the Nordics, go global,” said the Fund’s CEO Liselott Forsman.

Produced by Monica Hellström for Final Cut for Real, A House Made of Splinters is a heartfelt and poetic portrait of a group of children temporarily sheltered in a safe haven, away from their parents, as war is waging in Eastern Ukraine.

This is the fourth Oscar nominated documentary produced by Denmark’s Final Cut for Real. Last year Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee was nominated in not less than three categories for Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature. And Joshua Oppenheimer ’s The Act of Killing and its companion piece The Look of Silence were both candidates in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

At this year’s Oscar nominations announced January 24, Denmark also entered the Short Film Live Action category, with Ivalu, co-directed by Anders Walter and Pipaluk K. Jørgensen. The film tells the story of a young girl, Pipaluk, and her search for her missing older sister in a Greenlandic settlement. M&M Productions’ Rebecca Pruzan and Kim Magnusson are producing, in co-production with Polarama Greenland’s Emile Hertling Péronard and Pipaluk K. Jørgensen.

Norway is represented in the same Best Live Action Short Film strand with Night Ride, co-directed by Eirik Tveiten and Gaute Lid Larssen. The film tackling gender identity was produced by Larssen and Heidi Arnesen for Cylinder Productions.

Iceland is bringing the quirky My Year of Dicks by Sara Gunnarsdóttir and US screenwriter Pamela Ribon, vying for Best Animated Short Film. The film marks the first Oscar nomination for an Icelandic female director. The provocative short based on Ribon's memoir, tells of a teenager’s determination to lose her virginity.

The US film has won multiple awards including a Cristal statuette at the last Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

The 95^th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday March 12, 2023 at the Dolby Theatre in Los. Angeles.

Read our previous interviews with Östlund: CLICK HERE and Simon Lereng Wilmont: CLICK HERE.

For the full list of Oscar nominations, check: www.oscars.org