The Intouchables France's contender for the statuette

by Fabien Lemercier

18/09/2012 - Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache's comedy The Intouchables [trailer] has just been selected to represent France in the race for a nomination for the 2013 Oscar for best film in a foreign language to be handed out on February 24 after the five finalists are nominated on January 10.

After tallying 19.27 million admissions in France, the film has now also become the most watched French feature in the French language in the rest of the world with a provisional total of 23.3 million admissions at the end of August (compared to 23.1 million for former record holder Amélie). Sold by Gaumont for over 50 territories, The Intouchables has so far been released in 19 countries. It did especially well in Germany (8.6 million admissions), Spain (2.48 million cinema-goers), Italy (2.47 million), South Korea (1.7 million), Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. In the United States, the film reached the one-million mark at the end of August, 15 weeks after it was first released in the country, and is still attracting a steady flow of cinema-goers in 194 cinemas five weeks later. The film is due out this Friday, September 21, in the United Kingdom and in Sweden.

The Intouchables garnered no less than nine nominations for the 2012 Cesar Awards (including one for Best Film and one for Best Actor for François Cluzet), where Omar Sy won the Cesar for Best Actor for his role in the film.

The selection committee who chose the French contender for the 2013 Oscar was made up of the Cannes Film Festival's general delegate (Thierry Frémaux), the French National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC)'s president for advances of receipts (Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens), and five qualified personalities chosen by the minister of culture: Bérénice Bejo (actress), Carole Scotta (producer), Sylvain Chomet (director), Didier Lavergne (make-up artist, actor), and Abdel Raouf Dafri (screenwriter).

(Translated from French)