A scene from The Grandmaster by Chinese Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai

A scene from The Hunt by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg Photos: IC

Films from Cambodia, Palestine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina made the short list of candidates vying for the best foreign language film Oscar nomination, an Academy Awards organizer said Friday.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences whittled down 76 foreign films to nine in the first phase of the nomination process. The five nominees for the award will be announced on January 16.

Cambodia's French-language documentary The Missing Picture, which uses clay figurines to tell the story of the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge government, made the list, taking a step closer to becoming the country's first film to score an Oscar nomination.

Director Hany Abu-Assad, whose 2005 film Paradise Now earned Palestine's only Oscar foreign language nomination, made the list with his thriller Omar.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, which won the Oscar statuette in 2002 for No Man's Land, made the shortlist with the drama An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.

The drama The Great Beauty from Italy, a nation which has previously won a record 13 best foreign picture Oscars and Danish drama The Hunt starring Mads Mikkelsen, also made the list a week after both films picked up Golden Globe award nominations for best foreign language film.

Belgian Flemish-language drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, German thriller Two Lives and Hungarian drama The Notebook also made the shortlist.

Acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's ode to kung fu, The Grandmaster, made the list. The art house director, considered one of the world's top filmmakers and best-known for dramas Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, has never had a film nominated for an Oscar.

Notably absent from the list was Iranian domestic drama The Past starring French actress Berenice Bejo and directed by Asghar Farhadi, whose 2011 drama A Separation won the best foreign language Oscar.

The winner will be announced at the ceremony which will be held in Los Angeles on March 2.

Reuters