roujin mentioned this elsewhere, the just announced short-list:
Instead, pics that got the shortlist call were "The Counterfeiters" (Austria); "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" (Brazil); "Days of Darkness" (Canada); "Beaufort" (Israel); "The Unknown" (Italy); "Mongol" (Kazakhstan); "Katyn" (Poland); "12" (Russia); and "The Trap" (Serbia).
I've seen none of them.
I just heard Worldview's film-commentator Milos Stehlik call this short-list something like "The best Big Macs of foreign consumption". Meaning, this is the blandest, middling, set of films they probably could have come up with; it wouldn't surprise me if that is the case.