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The annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in California is always an opportunity to catch up on many of the contenders for the Best International Feature — née Best Foreign-Language — Film Academy Award. Now in its 31st edition, the festival this year has 51 of them, from favorite-to-beat “Parasite” from South Korea and Senegal’s “Atlantics,” to other films quietly making strides in the race: Czech Republic’s “The Painted Bird,” Sweden’s “And Then We Danced,” Russia’s “Beanpole,” Romania’s “The Whistlers,” North Macedonia’s documentary contender “Honeyland,” Norway’s “Out Stealing Horses,” and many more.

The festival will screen 188 films from 81 countries, including 51 premieres, from January 2-13, 2020. The Awards Buzz section includes a special jury of international film critics, who will review these films to present the Fipresci Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, as well as Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay in this category.

One hundred eighty-eight films films from 81 countries including 51 premieres highlight the lineup for the 31st annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which kicks off January 2 with a star-studded gala that has become a must-stop during awards season for Oscar hopefuls. The festival, which runs through January 13, also is known for showcasing a large number of submissions in the Motion Picture Academy’s International Film (formerly Foreign Language) competition and will feature 51 of those entries.

The opening-night film on January 3 is the Italian farce An Almost Ordinary Summer, while the closer is director Peter Cattaneo’s heartwarming dramedy Military Wives in which Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan and Jason Flemyng lead a superb ensemble cast. The film had its world premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and became an instant crowd-pleaser. Bleecker Street releases it in 2020.

Among the previously announced honorees at the January 2 gala are Antonio Banderas, Renee Zellweger,...

An interview with Dāvis Sīmanis, the director and Gints Gruber, the producer, give the arc of the film from inspiration to financing to international and U.S. distribution.

The Mover recounts the little-known, compelling true story of Latvia’s Žanis Lipke, a blue-collar worker honored as one of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations,’ an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Shoah to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis, alongside renowned fellow rescuers Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler. Hardly anyone would have predicted that Žanis Lipke, a completely ordinary worker, would miraculously become a hero.

In order to be able to support his family under wartime conditions, he worked at the German military aviation warehouses and supplemented his income by smuggling at night. Despite his family’s hardship under successive Soviet and German occupations, Lipke embarked on a carefully thought-out...