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Though the 2021 Oscar nominations will not be announced until March 15, the possibilities were narrowed down in nine categories with the release of the shortlists on February 9. Whether they make predicting the eventual nominees easier or harder is a matter of opinion. Our forum posters, many of whom are Hollywood insiders hiding behind screen names, were quick to sound off with reactions.

While they discussed the reshaping of the race, they cheered for their favorite films and lamented the fact that others have hit the end of the road. Below is just a sampling of their brutally honest comments concerning the Oscar shortlists. Take a look, then jump in here if you’re brave enough.

Best Documentary Feature

Wanda: “City Hall” snubbed… Lazy voters.

S.N.: I think “Welcome to Chechnya” was a very interesting choice and I hope it gets nominated.

Eddy Q: I think people may be underestimating “Gunda.

Lithuania’s official submission for the ‘Best International Feature’ category at the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021 is Karolis Kaupinis’ directorial debut Nova Lituania, which premiered at the 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. A striking period piece set in 1938, with Lithuania on the verge of annexation from the Soviet Union as its leaders walk a political tightrope between neighboring Poland and the encroaching threat of Germany, Kaupinis revisits a particular period which addresses the rising tide of fascism and nationalism today, albeit through the droll ponderings of geographer Feliksas Gruodis and his solution of a ‘backup Lithuania.’ I got to speak to the Kaupinis who also shared details about his next project.…...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Karolis Kaupini's Nova Lituania is exclusively showing November 9 - December 8, 2020 on Mubi in the Debuts series.It starts as an idea, grows into a theory, and dies as a dream. It’s the late 1930s, and Lithuania is cornered by warring neighbors. Vilnius, the country’s capital, has long been gobbled up by Poland, and the growing tension between Hitler’s Reich and Stalin’s Russia will soon leave the tiny Baltic state in the middle of a crossfire. Pacing nervously in a semi-deserted lecture hall, geography professor Feliksas Gruodis points at a map of Lithuania, and one of Africa: “just like vast underpopulated areas of Africa once drew white colonists, so we are in the same position.” The solution? To build another state - better yet, to ship the existing one overseas, and found a colony where people...

Bookmark this page for all the latest international feature submissions.

Submissions for the best international feature film award at the 2021 Academy Awards have started to come in, and Screen is keeping a running list of each film below.

Scroll down for the full list

The 93rd Academy Awards is set to take place on April 25, 2021. It was originally set to be held on February 28, before both the ceremony and eligibility period were postponed for two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Submitted films must have been released in their respective countries between the expanded dates of October 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. (Last year it was October-September.

In the late 1930s, prior to emigrating to the United States, Lithuanian geographer Kazys Pakstas proposed a radical solution to what he saw as the inevitable eradication of the nation through its assimilation into the German and Russian spheres of influence: The purchase and annexation of a large tract of land on the African or American continent, and the creation there of a “backup Lithuania.” Eighty years later, filmmaker Karolis Kaupinis has taken this eccentric idea as the kernel of truth from which his beautifully poker-faced feature debut can sprout into an elegant, offbeat fiction that is both steeped in pre-war Lithuanian history and starkly relevant to our current moment — wherever nationalism is being invoked for political capital by powerful cowards. Which is to say: almost everywhere.

In appropriate 4:3 ratio (boxed in on either side like the beleaguered nation it examines), and in crisp black-and-white, ‘Nova Lituania’ opens with little context or hand-holding.