Nine features will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 86th Academy Awards®. Seventy-six films had originally been considered in the category.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

Belgium, "The Broken Circle Breakdown," Felix van Groeningen, director;

Bosnia and Herzegovina, "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker," Danis Tanovic, director;

Cambodia, "The Missing Picture," Rithy Panh, director;

Denmark, "The Hunt," Thomas Vinterberg, director;

Germany, "Two Lives," Georg Maas, director;

Hong Kong, "The Grandmaster," Wong Kar-wai, director;

Hungary, "The Notebook," Janos Szasz, director;

Italy, "The Great Beauty," Paolo Sorrentino, director;

Palestine, "Omar," Hany Abu-Assad, director.

Foreign Language Film nominations for 2013 are being determined in two phases.

The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based Academy members, screened the original submissions in the category between mid-October and December 16. The group's top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy's Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist.

The shortlist will be winnowed down to the five nominees by specially invited committees in New York and Los Angeles. They will spend Friday, January 10, through Sunday, January 12, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.

The 86th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 16, 2014, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

So I guess the Wind Rises didn't make it? Sad, but not surprising. I was hoping it would make it as an honor to Hayao Miyazaki

Then again we usually think we know the winner of this category before the ceremony and then we all get it wrong. Congrats on the Oscar An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker!

I'm not sure they would give Tanović another Oscar. No Man's Land is really one of the worst winners in the foreign category IMHO.

They obviously gladly gave him his first, against Amelie no less.

I wonder the same. I am going to assume yes since it did come out in France in 2013. Just in October rather than before the deadline on September 30th. I assume the next French submission will have to be a film released there between January 1st and the end of September 2014.

On a related note, though, I must say, the film France did submit, Renoir, is a gem in its own right. Old-fashioned and gentle, perhaps bordering on quaint, but highly entertaining, well acted, and very, very beautiful. I have seen people throw it under the bus (many no doubt sight unseen) because they perceive it as having stolen Blue Is the Warmest Color's spot.