|
 "It's an amazing, wonderful paradox, isn't it?" said
Pawlikowski, 57, who watched the nominations on a coffee shop
television while on vacation in Mexico.
Spurning bigger movie offers to stay on the fringes and using a
small budget how he pleased gave him the greatest creative
freedom, he said.
"Everyone said it would be professional suicide," said the
director whose films "My Summer of Love" (2004) and "Last
Resort" (2000) each won a BAFTA award. "It turned out to be the
opposite."
An Oscar nomination is a big deal - and big business - for any
movie. But the global exposure it lends to foreign films like
"Ida" is a special treat for often small budget productions far
out of Hollywood's orbit.
"I am overflowing with joy today," said the Argentine director
Damian Szifron, whose black comedy "Wild Tales" also picked up a
nomination. "I feel like Gene Kelly in 'Singin' in the Rain.'"
That reaction is a common one in the best foreign language film
category, where under-the-radar gems are often discovered.
"It's great for our country," said Pawlikowski. "It's great for
our cinema."
[to top of second column] |
In this year's foreign language Oscar race, "Ida," the story of an
18-year-old novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who learns she is a Jewish
orphan, is up against the Russian tragedy "Leviathan," and war
dramas "Tangerines" from Estonia and "Timbuktu" from Mauritania.
"Leviathan," directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, has already bested
"Ida" and "Tangerines" for the foreign picture Golden Globe handed
out last Sunday.
But for Pawlikowski, there may be even more to savor from these
Oscars. Also earning nominations were his cinematographers, Lukasz
Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, the only crossovers to another category
among the foreign films.
"It's a bit of a fairytale, which happens just once in a lifetime,"
he said.
(Editing by Mary Milliken and Gunna Dickson)
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