Oscars: Germany Selects 'Never Look Away' for Foreign-Language Category

Sony Pictures Classics recently bought the Venice Film Festival competition entry from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for multiple territories.

Germany has picked Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Venice Film Festival competition title Never Look Away for the foreign-language film race at the Oscars.

Sony Pictures Classics recently bought the psychological thriller for multiple territories.

Never Look Away stars Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch, Saskia Rosendahl and Ina Weisse in an epic period drama spanning three eras of German history. Schilling stars as a young artist who flees from East Germany to West Germany but remains haunted by his childhood under the Nazis and his youth suffering under communism. Once in the West, he begins to work through his and his generation's trauma through his paintings.

Never Look Away is getting its world premiere in Venice before heading to Toronto, where it will have a special presentation. It beat out such other potential German contenders as 3 Days in Quiberon for the foreign-language race.

Since the reunification of Germany, the country has won the foreign-language Oscar twice, namely for Caroline Link's Nowhere in Africa and for Henckel von Donnersmarck's breakthrough The Lives of Others, which got the honor at the 2007 Academy Awards.