48 Fun Facts About World Cinema

Which 2019 film was the first since Marty, over 60 years earlier, to win both the Palme d'Or and Best Picture?

Parasite's semi-basement flat and its whole street were built on a set, partly so the flood scenes could be shot.

Which 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet film has a shy young Parisian secretly engineer small joys for the people around her?

Amélie was turned away by Cannes after festival chief Gilles Jacob found it uninteresting, and the snub stirred a minor controversy once audiences made it a hit.

Which Guillermo del Toro fantasy has a girl named Ofelia meet a faun in Francoist Spain in 1944?

Pan's Labyrinth is El laberinto del fauno in Spanish, naming a faun of Roman myth rather than the god Pan, and it went on to win three Oscars.

Which 2002 Brazilian film, cast largely with real favela residents, charts gang wars in a Rio housing project?

City of God wasn't nominated for the foreign-language Oscar as Brazil's entry, then a year later earned four nominations, including Best Director for Fernando Meirelles.

Which brothers gave their first paid public film screening at Paris's Grand Café in December 1895?

The Lumière brothers were beaten to a paying audience by Berlin's Skladanowsky brothers, whose Bioscop shows had run through November 1895.

Which Ingmar Bergman film has a knight returning from the Crusades play chess with Death?

The Seventh Seal's chess game with Death came from Albertus Pictor's medieval church murals, which Bergman studied while his pastor father preached.

Who became the first performer to win an acting Oscar for a non-English-language role, in De Sica's Two Women?

Sophia Loren was first cast as the daughter, with Anna Magnani as her mother, but after Magnani left the film Loren played the mother instead.

Which Park Chan-wook thriller frees a man after fifteen years' captivity and has him eat a live octopus?

Oldboy's octopus scene was real: Choi Min-sik went through four live octopuses during filming, and the film won the 2004 Cannes Grand Prix.

Which monochrome Alfonso Cuarón film, named for a Mexico City neighbourhood, follows a live-in maid called Cleo?

Roma's Cleo was played by Yalitza Aparicio, a trainee preschool teacher who had never acted, and she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Which 1988 Sicilian-set film ends with a reel of all the kisses a village priest had cut from its screenings?

Cinema Paradiso flopped twice in Italy until a shortened cut won the Cannes Grand Prix, and it went on to win the foreign-language Oscar.

Which Vittorio De Sica film follows Antonio Ricci and his son Bruno through a desperate post-war search?

Bicycle Thieves' lead, Lamberto Maggiorani, was a real factory worker, and when he went back to the factory after filming he was laid off.

Which Italian film, whose bookshop-owner hero turns a concentration camp into a game for his son, won three Oscars?

Life Is Beautiful's Roberto Benigni was so overjoyed at its foreign-language win that he climbed onto the backs of the seats before heading to the stage.

What name, traced to a 2002 New York Times article, is given to Nigeria's prolific home-video film industry?

Nollywood's boom is usually dated from Living in Bondage, a 1992 Igbo-language film released direct to video. Most Igbo filmmakers nonetheless prefer to shoot in English.

Which Telugu epic by S. S. Rajamouli won India's first feature-film Oscar, for the song 'Naatu Naatu'?

India passed over RRR for its international feature Oscar entry in favour of Last Film Show, yet RRR's 'Naatu Naatu' won Best Original Song.

Which Italian city's film festival, first held under Mussolini, is the oldest in the world?

Venice's festival grew so political that in 1938 Mussolini and Hitler overruled its jury, and France set out to launch a free rival at Cannes.

Which Italian director cast TV cowboy Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars?

Sergio Leone wanted James Coburn, who cost too much, and settled on Rawhide's Clint Eastwood for $15,000.

Which French magician turned filmmaker landed a capsule in the Moon's eye in A Trip to the Moon?

Georges Méliès saw A Trip to the Moon pirated by Thomas Edison and others, and after going bankrupt he sold toys and sweets from a stall at Gare Montparnasse.

Which Spanish director's All About My Mother won the foreign-language Oscar before he won for writing Talk to Her?

Pedro Almodóvar kept an office job at the phone company Telefónica for twelve years while shooting his first Super 8 short films.

Which 2016 South Korean hit strands a workaholic father and his daughter on a KTX service during a zombie outbreak?

Train to Busan ends with the girl walking through a tunnel singing Aloha ʻOe, the song her father missed at her recital, until soldiers bring her to safety.

Which 1998 Tom Tykwer film gives its heroine twenty minutes to find 100,000 marks and save her boyfriend Manni?

Run Lola Run was Franka Potente's breakthrough, and four years later she starred opposite Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity.

Which New Zealand director became the first woman to win the Palme d'Or, for The Piano in 1993?

Jane Campion lost the Best Director Oscar for The Piano to Steven Spielberg, then won it 28 years later for The Power of the Dog.

Which 2023 Justine Triet courtroom drama won the Palme d'Or and then the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay?

France passed over Anatomy of a Fall as its Oscar entry, choosing The Taste of Things, yet Justine Triet's film won Best Original Screenplay.

Which 2011 French comedy-drama about a quadriplegic and his carer was inspired by the life of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo?

The Intouchables's real carer, Abdel Sellou, is French-Algerian, and the directors found the pair in a documentary. Five percent of the profits went to a charity for paralysed people.

Which 2011 Indonesian action film by Welsh director Gareth Evans traps police inside a Jakarta crime lord's block?

The Raid became The Raid: Redemption in the US because Sony couldn't secure the plain title, and the subtitle left room for sequels.

Which 1998 Hideo Nakata film follows a cursed videotape whose viewers die seven days later?

Ringu was remade in Hollywood as The Ring in 2002, which moved the cursed-tape story from Japan to Seattle.

Which Bong Joon-ho film unleashes a creature from Seoul's Han River on a family that runs a riverside snack stand?

The Host was sparked by a real 2000 scandal in which a US military mortuary official had formaldehyde poured down a drain into the Han River.

Which 2002 Hong Kong thriller did Martin Scorsese remake as the Best Picture winner The Departed?

Infernal Affairs's remake finally won Martin Scorsese a Best Director Oscar, after he had lost for films such as Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

Which director of Raise the Red Lantern staged the opening ceremonies of both the 2008 and 2022 Beijing Olympics?

Zhang Yimou spent the Cultural Revolution as a farm labourer and then seven years in a textile mill before he became a filmmaker.

Which 2018 Hirokazu Kore-eda drama about a makeshift family surviving on petty theft won the Palme d'Or?

Shoplifters grew from news reports on poverty and shoplifting in Japan, and Kore-eda edited the film himself. It was the first Japanese Palme d'Or winner since The Eel in 1997.

Which 2021 Ryusuke Hamaguchi film, adapted from Haruki Murakami, was the first Japanese Best Picture nominee?

Drive My Car was meant to shoot in Busan, but the pandemic halted production, so Ryusuke Hamaguchi rewrote it and moved the story to Hiroshima.

Which 2008 film about a failed cellist turned encoffiner won Japan's first competitive foreign-language Oscar?

Departures began with its star, Masahiro Motoki, who was so moved by Shinmon Aoki's memoir Coffinman that he felt it would make a film.

Which Ozu film about ageing parents visiting their children topped Sight and Sound's 2012 directors' poll?

Japanese exporters judged Ozu's films too Japanese to sell abroad, so Tokyo Story reached French cinemas only in 1978.

Which 2011 Asghar Farhadi drama about a Tehran couple's divorce case was the first Iranian film to win an Oscar?

A Separation's shoot was banned after Asghar Farhadi publicly backed jailed director Jafar Panahi, and the ban was lifted only once he apologised.

Which 1925 Sergei Eisenstein silent film contains the 'Odessa Steps', among the most recreated sequences in cinema?

Battleship Potemkin's massacre on the Odessa Steps never happened, yet its runaway pram has been restaged in films such as The Untouchables.

Which 2006 German film follows a Stasi captain secretly listening in on an East Berlin playwright in 1984?

The Lives of Others was allowed to film at the former Stasi headquarters, but the Hohenschönhausen memorial refused it permission.

Which Austrian director won the Palme d'Or twice within four years, for The White Ribbon and then Amour?

Michael Haneke wrote Amour specifically for Jean-Louis Trintignant, who had largely withdrawn from films to work on stage and came back for it.

Which 2013 film, shot in black and white, follows a Polish novice nun who learns her parents were Jewish?

Ida's star, Agata Trzebuchowska, had never acted before Paweł Pawlikowski cast her, and the film became the first Polish winner of the foreign-language Oscar.

Which 1929 surrealist short, co-written by Salvador Dalí, opens with a razor drawn toward a woman's eye?

Un Chien Andalou's sliced eye really came from a calf, and Luis Buñuel later said he kept stones in his pockets at the premiere in case the audience turned on him.

Which 2006 film set in La Mancha saw its six main actresses, led by Penélope Cruz, share the Cannes Best Actress prize?

Volver brought Carmen Maura back to work with her old director for the first time since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and their reported falling-out.

Which Bengali director's debut Pather Panchali opened the Apu Trilogy?

Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali ran out of money and dragged on for about three years, until a West Bengal government loan let him finish it.

Which 2002 Aleksandr Sokurov film tours the Hermitage's Winter Palace in a single unbroken Steadicam take?

Russian Ark's unbroken take succeeded only after earlier attempts had broken down.

Which Senegalese novelist directed Black Girl, about a young woman taken from Dakar to work for a couple in France?

Ousmane Sembène worked on the Marseille docks before he learned filmmaking at Moscow's Gorky Film Studio in the early 1960s.

Which Apichatpong Weerasethakul film about a man with a failing kidney in rural Isan won the 2010 Palme d'Or?

Uncle Boonmee passed Thailand's censors uncut, though scenes like its own had been cut from Apichatpong Weerasethakul's two previous features.

Which 2018 Nigerian film by Genevieve Nnaji lost Oscar eligibility for being mostly in English?

Lionheart has only about ten minutes of Igbo dialogue, so the Academy disqualified what had been Nigeria's first-ever Oscar entry.

Which 1975 Chantal Akerman film about a widow's household routine topped Sight and Sound's 2022 critics' poll?

Jeanne Dielman had not even made the critics' top ten a decade earlier, and its 2022 win made it the first film by a woman to top the poll.

Which 2021 body-horror film made Julia Ducournau the second woman, and the first solo, to win the Palme d'Or?

Titane's win leaked early when jury president Spike Lee, asked in French to announce the 'first prize', misread it as 'first place' and read out the winner at the start of the ceremony.

Which 1986 John Woo film shed Chow Yun-fat's 'box office poison' label and launched Hong Kong's heroic-bloodshed genre?

A Better Tomorrow made the Alain Delon-branded sunglasses Chow Yun-fat wore as Mark a hit in Hong Kong.

Which 2000 Mexican film by Alejandro González Iñárritu links three separate stories through one Mexico City car crash?

Amores Perros was the first feature by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who had started out as a DJ at Mexico City's rock station WFM.