It’s a wide world of foreign-language Oscar contenders: Here are 13 notable films

A survey of the fourscore movies officially selected by their nations for Oscar consideration in the foreign-language film category offers both idiosyncratic perspectives and surprisingly familiar approaches. Here is just a sampling of the many pictures worth watching:

‘Aferim!’ | Romania

A breezy black-and-white period western (or “eastern,” as director Radu Jude says) in which constables on horses leisurely roam the countryside in search of runaway slaves. The dismissively xenophobic dialogue manages to be shockingly funny while capturing despicable attitudes in a grimy but revealing snapshot. When the reality of that time lands in the film, though, it does so with gut-wrenching force. Jude says, “An exercise which is important for any society is to know its past without embellishing it … many of the problems we have nowadays have at least one root in the distant past.”

‘The Assassin’ | Taiwan

A feast for the eyes, one of the most magnificently shot films of the last several years. It’s a martial-arts adventure about a woman (the magnetic Shu Qi) who returns home as a killer assigned to slay her former love. As composed by storied helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien, its movement is best described in terms of tempo, not pacing. Said Hou, “There really were no references in other films for what I wanted to do; I just wanted to capture the essence of what I read in the short stories in college.”

‘Court’ | India

An unusual legal drama set in Mumbai. The cripplingly bureaucratic and imbalanced justice system it depicts is antiquated to the point of oppression. Writer-director Chaitanya Tamhane says, “The more I researched and observed, the more I realized that apart from the structural failings, it was also the human failings, their prejudices, personal politics and moral values, that contributed to the malaise of these institutions.”

‘Félix et Meira’ | Canada

This film moves as cautiously as does its leading lady toward leaving her marriage — and community — for romance. Meira is an Orthodox Jewish wife in Montreal, drawn to a middle-aged Gentile slacker. The deadly serious-feeling entry joins the French “Mustang” as critiques of conservative religious societies, but it’s really about a repressed woman creeping toward imperfect freedom.

‘Flowers’ | Spain

A film well named. The cinematic seed pokes out of its pod, then gradually unfurls like a blossom. The Basque-language entry concerns a depressed menopausal woman who comes to life again when she starts receiving mysterious floral deliveries. As the story unfolds, so do the three female characters who drive it, each reaching for her own kind of nourishment.

‘Goodnight Mommy’ | Austria

This plays like the beautifully shot love child of M. Night Shyamalan and Eli Roth. It creeps in its petty pace through the days of a shattered family in its remote home, casually sprinkling in bizarre visual details. It’s hard to tell whether its big reveal is supposed to surprise, but the moody film suddenly turns brutal.

‘Mustang’ | France

A French entry, although it’s shot in Turkey and is in the Turkish language. In unrelenting melancholy, it relates the slow slide into desperation of five sisters sequestered by ultra-conservative guardians. It is colored by shades of “The Virgin Suicides,” this year’s quirky documentary “The Wolf Pack” and even a chronically depressed “Pride and Prejudice.”

‘A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’ | Sweden

This film gives new meaning to deadpan humor. The actors wear pasty makeup, creating the appearance of ambivalently animated corpses in mostly unconnected vignettes — the syntax of the film itself feels like a collection of non sequiturs. It reads as Monty Python directed by Ingmar Bergman: contemplative absurdity.

‘The Second Mother’ | Brazil

On one level, a bruising commentary on class warfare; on another, a paean to the depth of the maternal instinct, carried by Regina Casé’s central performance.

‘Theeb’ | Jordan

An adventure-survival story about a Bedouin child in World War I-era Jordan who, along with his beloved older brother, must survive not only the desert but also the various human factions threatening their lives.

‘Viva’ | Ireland

The Irish entry is in Spanish and set in Havana. It concerns a young aspiring drag performer forced to reconnect with his brutish, drunk, estranged convict father.

‘A War’ | Denmark

Dual focus on a well-intentioned commander of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan and his family, missing him at home — until a fateful decision both brings the family together and threatens to split it apart. The film comments on how perspectives of tragedy and justice are related to proximity.

‘The Wave’ | Norway

A disaster movie that feels exactly like an American studio specimen, fulfilling director Roar Uthaug’s stated intention of bringing “a traditional Hollywood genre closer to home.”

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