Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev celebrated the film missing out on a nomination.
By AMY SPIROUpdated: JANUARY 25, 2018 04:34Samuel Maoz, director of 'Foxtrot' (photo credit: REUTERS/ALESSANDRO BIANCHI)
Samuel Maoz, the director of Foxtrot, said on Wednesday the film’s failure to be nominated for a foreign-language Oscar caused him a “temporary depression.”“Yesterday [Tuesday], I felt a loss,” he wrote on Facebook.“In the beginning, it was a shock, after that pain and a temporary depression.”The director added that amid the pain, he suddenly remembered something he had forgotten in the obsession with receiving an Academy Award. “I forgot that the real joy comes in the artistic process – in the moments between ‘action’ and ‘cut,’” he wrote. “I am bidding farewell to Foxtrot with a smile and a tear and continuing on to the next film.”FOXTROT Trailer | TIFF 2017. (YouTube/TIFF Trailers)While Foxtrot, Maoz’s controversial movie about grieving parents, made the Oscars shortlist for foreign language film, it did not rank among the five final nominees announced on Tuesday.The film did garner significant buzz both abroad – in the form of a Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival and other awards – and at home – in the form of harsh criticism from Culture Minister Miri Regev.Indeed, Regev rejoiced after hearing the news that the film was not an Oscar nominee.In an interview with Army Radio on Tuesday evening, Regev said the Academy of Motion Pictures’ decision was a good one.“It’s not that I’m happy,” she said. “The decision [not to include Foxtrot] saved us from shame and disappointment...A film that portrays the IDF and its soldiers in a false way as murderers and harms the name of the IDF is not worthy of representing the State of Israel.”
