In anticipation of the 97th Academy Awards® this Sunday, we’re highlighting our very own Oscar winners and nominees on Kino Film Collection. These films span more than 70 years and represent the best of filmmaking from all over the world. From three Sophia Loren classics to the film that secured the first Best Director nomination for a woman, here are 17 award-worthy titles to check out now. And best of luck to Johan Grimonprez and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat this weekend!
Nowhere in Africa (2002)
Winner - Best Foreign Language Film at the 2003 Academy Awards®
A love story spanning two continents, this true tale of a Jewish family who fled the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya won the 2003 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel and their five-year-old daughter each deal with the harsh realities of their new life as they learn to cherish their time in Africa.
Mephisto (1981)
Winner - Best Foreign Language at the 1982 Academy Awards®
The 1981 Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign Language Film) Mephisto concerns a passionate, but struggling actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who remains in Germany during the Nazi regime and reaps the rewards of this Faustian pact by finally achieving the stardom he has long craved.
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963)
Winner - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1965 Academy Awards®
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is a sparklingly original comedy that casts Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren in three different stories set throughout Italy. In Naples, they are poor but resourceful, selling black market cigarettes on the streets. In Milan, Loren is costumed in Christian Dior and debates her preference for a Rolls-Royce or her husband. And in Rome, Mastroianni is an industry scion who helps Loren’s prostitute set a wavering priest back onto the spiritual plane. Witty and unforgettable, this gem from master filmmaker Vittorio de Sica (Marriage Italian Style) is picture-postcard beautiful and effortlessly hilarious.
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Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards®
United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba.
Four Daughters (2023)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards®
One of 2023’s most acclaimed releases, this riveting documentary by two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin) uses an audacious formal conceit to tell the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters. Attempting to answer the question of how and why the Tunisian woman’s two eldest were radicalized, Ben Hania reveals a complex history. We watch as the family relives key events in their lives with help from professional actors standing in for the missing girls. Four Daughters is a compelling portrait of five women and a unique and ambitious work of nonfiction cinema that pushes against the conventional boundaries of the documentary.
Of Fathers and Sons (2018)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 2019 Academy Awards®
After his Sundance award-winning documentary Return to Homs (2013), Talal Derki returned to his Syrian homeland for Of Fathers and Sons, where he gained the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses primarily on the children, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up with a father whose only dream is to establish an Islamic caliphate. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards, and Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, Of Fathers and Sons is a work of unparalleled intimacy that captures the chilling moment when childhood dies and jihadism is born.
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Fire at Sea (2016)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 2017 Academy Awards®
An Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and the first nonfiction film to ever win the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, Fire at Sea takes place in Lampedusa, a remote Mediterranean island that has become a major entry point for refugees into Europe. Award-winning filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi masterfully juxtaposes these realities, providing a new understanding of the migrant crisis and the price of freedom.
Trouble the Water (2008)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 2009 Academy Awards®
An Academy Award nominee and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this powerful documentary is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Trouble the Water takes you inside Hurricane Katrina by weaving an insider’s view with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking. It is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes, survive the storm, and then seize a chance for a new beginning.
The Scent of Green Papaya (1993)
Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1994 Academy Awards®
An Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Tran Anh Hung's "luxuriant, visually seductive debut" (New York Times) recreates antebellum Vietnam through both the wide eyes of childhood and the deep blush of first love. In 1951 Saigon, 10-year-old Mui (Lu Man San) enters household service for an affluent but troubled Vietnamese family. Despite her servile role, Mui discovers beauty and epiphany in the lush physical details that envelope her, while earning the fragile affection of the household's grieving matriarch. As she comes of age, the now grown Mui (Tran Nu Yen-Khe) finds her relationship with a handsome pianist she has admired since childhood growing in depth and complexity.
Colonel Redl (1984)
Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1986 Academy Awards®
Set in the lead up to WWI, Szabó's Cannes Grand Jury-winning Colonel Redl charts the rise of Alfred Redl to head of counter-intelligence of the Austro-Hungarian Army. His hidden homosexuality, however, is used against him by enemies of the state, putting both his professional standing and his country's security in dire straits. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1985, the third of four such Academy Award nominations Szabó's films earned.
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The Boat Is Full (1981)
Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1982 Academy Awards®
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, The Boat Is Full is a tense and heartbreaking drama that captures the plight of refugees during WWII. A ragtag band of exiles from Germany sneak into Switzerland seeking asylum. They are allowed to stay at an isolated inn as long as they pretend to be a family. Director Markus Imhoof (More Than Honey, Eldorado) keeps tightening the suspense until the final, breathtaking minutes. Pointedly relevant and nailbitingly tense, The Boat is Full is a WWII film for the ages.
Seven Beauties (1976)
Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1977 Academy Awards®
Nominee - Best Director at the 1977 Academy Awards®
Nominee - Best Actor at the 1977 Academy Awards®
Nominee - Best Original Screenplay at the 1977 Academy Awards®
Nominated for four Academy Awards, Seven Beauties stars Giancarlo Giannini (Swept Away) as Pasqualino Frafuso, known in Naples as "Pasqualino Seven Beauties." A petty thief who lives off of the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost, Pasqualino is arrested for murder and later sent to fight in the army after committing sexual assault. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp where he plots to make his escape by seducing a German officer. Director Lina Wertmüller became the first female director to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar, for Seven Beauties.
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The Conformist (1970)
Nominee - Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1972 Academy Awards®
Set in Mussolini's Italy, The Conformist stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as a repressed man who joins the Fascists in an attempt to fit in. Adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel and newly restored from the original camera negative, Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue, and breathtaking color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Memphis (1970)
Nominee - Best Documentary Feature at the 1971 Academy Awards®
Constructed from a wealth of archival footage, King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis is a monumental documentary that follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1955 to 1968, in his rise from regional activist to world-renowned leader of the Civil Rights movement. Rare footage of King's speeches, protests, and arrests are interspersed with scenes of other high-profile supporters and opponents of the cause, punctuated by heartfelt testimonials by some of Hollywood's biggest stars. King is a cinematic national treasure that allows viewers to be first-hand witnesses to Dr. King’s crusade, and thereby gain a fuller appreciation of both the personal challenges he endured and the vast cultural legacy he left behind.
Sunflower (1970)
Nominee - Best Original Score (Henry Mancini) at the 1971 Academy Awards®
An Oscar nominee for Best Score (Henry Mancini), Sunflower is a grandly emotional melodrama featuring a stunning performance from Sophia Loren. In another of the actress’s great collaborations with director Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief), Loren plays Giovanna, a steel-willed Italian woman on a desperate search to find her husband Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), who has gone missing on the WWII battlefields of Russia. Making the grueling overland journey years after the end of the war, she tracks Antonio down and finds him a changed man. This heart-wrenching reunion will forever alter the course of their lives.
Marriage Italian Style (1964)
Nominee - Best Foreign Language Film at the 1966 Academy Awards®
Nominee - Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 1965 Academy Awards®
In this Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Marcello Mastroianni co-stars as the irrepressibly carnal businessman Domenico, who discovers Sophia Loren's Filumena as a young prostitute. When he chooses to marry a young cashier instead of her, Filumena is furious, and resorts to a series of wild and hilarious ruses to win back his hand.
Little Fugitive (1953)
Nominee - Best Original Screenplay at the 1954 Academy Awards®
Widely regarded as one of the most influential and enjoyable films of the American independent cinema, Little Fugitive is an utterly charming fable that poetically captures the joys and wonders of childhood. When a 7-year-old boy (Richie Andrusco) is tricked into believing he killed his older brother, he gathers his meager possessions and flees to New York’s nether wonderland: Coney Island. Upon and beneath the crowded boardwalk, Joey experiences a day and night filled with adventures and mysteries, resulting in a film that is refreshingly spontaneous and thoroughly delightful.