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Russia nominates WWII drama Sobibor for Oscars

The drama has been directed by Konstantin Khabensky

MOSCOW, September 11. /TASS/. Russia has nominated the World War II drama ‘Sobibor’ directed by Konstantin Khabensky, an acclaimed Russian stage and screen actor, for the best foreign-language film for the Oscars, producer Alexander Rodnyansky, a member of the Oscar committee told TASS on Monday.

The committee had a meeting earlier on the same day at the Moscow House of Cinema.

"Russia has nominated ‘Sobibor’," he said, adding that the committee had selected it by a majority vote as a Russian film with the biggest chances for winning an Academy award.

Rodnyansky did not specify the other films the committee had considered but said there had been competition between films at the stage of selection.

Director Vladimir Menshov, whose film ‘Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears’ received an Oscar as the best foreign-language film in 1981 and who chairs the Oscar committee, declined to discuss the issue with TASS. "No comments," he said.

The committee’s meeting lasted more than an hour, with many members voting by teleconference. Directors Vladimir Menshov, Nikolai Dostal, and Dmitry Meskhiyev, producers Sergei Selyanov and Yevgeny Gindilis and a number of others attended the meeting in person.

The general appeal voiced at the session was to vote objectively and not out of a mere support for one or another fellow-filmmaker.

‘Sobibor’ highlights a rebellion of inmates at the extermination camp in eastern Poland that proved to be the only successful revolt within the system of Nazi camps. In addition to directing, Konstantin Khabensky stars in it the captive Red Army officer Alexander Pechersky, who led the uprising.

Sobibor was in operation from May 1942 through to October 1943. Various sources indicate that the Nazis annihilated from 150,000 to 250,000 Jewish people from Poland and other European countries.

The Nazi command closed the camp down right after the rebellion led by Pechersky and razed its compound to the ground.

The Academy will name the nominees for awards on January 22, 2019, and the awarding ceremony will take place on February 24 at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

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