Image caption Uncle Boonmee was a surprise winner of the Palme d'Or last year

The Thai movie that won the prestigious Palme d'Or at Cannes will not feature at the Oscars in the foreign language film category.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives was one of 66 films that had featured on the Academy's longlist of eligible titles.

Yet it is not one of the nine films that have been chosen for the next round of voting.

France's official submission, Of Gods and Men, has also been eliminated.

The film, inspired by the murder of seven French monks in Algeria in 1996, was also lauded at Cannes where it won the Grand Prix last May.

The nine films on the Academy's shortlist hail from Algeria, Denmark, Canada, Greece, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Sweden.

The shortlist will now be winnowed down to five nominees, to be announced with the rest of the Oscar nominations on Tuesday.

Uncle Boonmee, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, tells of a dying man who is visited by the ghosts of his late wife and son.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM SHORTLIST Hors la Loi (Outside the Law) - Algeria

Incendies - Canada

In a Better World - Denmark

Dogtooth - Greece

Confessions - Japan

Biutiful - Mexico

Life, Above All - South Africa

Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain) - Spain

Simple Simon - Sweden

The film was praised by critics and awarded the Palme d'Or by a jury headed by the US director Tim Burton.

Algeria's submission, Outside the Law, provoked controversy when it premiered in Cannes last May.

Demonstrators claimed that Rachid Bouchareb's film - which tells of three brothers caught up in Algeria's struggle for independence - was biased against France.

The Academy Awards take place at Hollywood's Kodak theatre on 27 February.

Last year's foreign language film Oscar went to Argentinian drama The Secret in Their Eyes.

One of the titles it beat to the award was Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, recipient of the Palme d'Or in 2009.