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Told through reconstruction and archive footage, the story of Ethiopian marathon legend Abebe Bikila can't muster the drama it deserves. The first African to win a gold when he ran barefoot through Rome in 1960, he became the first to retain a marathon title, winning in Tokyo in 64, before a car accident led to his recuperation at the Stoke Mandeville hospital in England.

Rasselas Lakew plays Bikila with a handsome, quiet dignity but, despite some ravishing running shots on the Abyssinian plateau, the film never has the sense of purpose its subject clearly had. It also omits to mention perhaps Bikila – as the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's Marathon Man.

DramaJason Solomons

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With Olympic fever on the verge of breaking out, it is of little surprise that our cinemas are being bombarded with all manner of inspirational sports stories. After the overly-insistent approach of the home-grown flag-waving exercise Fast Girls, The Athlete instead endeavours to tell a more heartfelt and universal story, albeit with results that only sometimes feel adequately nourishing.

The first time we see Abebe Bikila (Rasselas Lakew), it is 1969 and he is readying himself for an epic three-year journey. Bikila is unquestionably best known for his barefoot run during the 1960 Rome Olympics, in which he collected Gold – and the first medal for a black athlete - in the marathon. Back in ’69, he is prepping for one final race at the 1972 Munich Olympics, while directors Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew transport us back to his beginnings, observing the ups and downs that brought him to both...

121 films later… another installment of the Pan African Film Festival (Paff) in Los Angeles, CA, came to a close on Wednesday, the 23rd, with the announcement of its filmmaker awards.

Prizes were handed out for the following categories: Best Narrative Feature, Best First Feature Film, Best Narrative Short, Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short, and Audience Favorite awards.

I was extremely pleased to see João Daniel Tikhomiroff’s Besouro win the Best Narrative Feature prize. It’s a film we’ve touted on this blog for the last 2 years, since initially hearing about it. The film is still without North American distribution, as far as I know, and it needs all the press and push it can get. I hope it’s eventually picked up – even if it’s a straight-to-dvd release.

Ava DuVernay’s I Will Follow received the well-deserved Best First Feature Film award.

And the Jamie Foxx-executive produced Thunder Soul,...

Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew's "Atletu" took home high honors from the 7th annual Bahamas International Film Festival over the weekend. The Ethiopian sports drama about former Olympic Gold Medal winner Abebe Bikila won the Spirit of Freedom (Narrative) competition and was also named as the recipient of the Festival's Audience Award for best feature narrative. The Israeli-American documentary "Budrus," from director Julia Bacha, won the Spirit of Freedom prize ...

HollywoodNews.com: Those of us who were around at the time will recall the most memorable moment of the Rome Olympics in 1960. An unknown Ethiopian barefoot marathon runner, Abeba Bikila won the Gold, becoming the first black African to win any kind of Olympic gold.

He did it again in Tokyo four years later, winning by a record margin.

Now there’s a film about Bikila, and it’s another first, Ethiopia’s first Oscar® contender in the Foreign Language Film category. HollywoodNews.com spoke to its co-director/writer Davey Frankel. He told us that these marathons were just the beginning of Bikila’s story in his film “The Athlete.”

“The real inspiration comes later, after a tragic accident changes Bikila’s life, forcing him to face challenges he could never have anticipated,” says Frankel.

It’s an ambitious film for a low budget independent. It was shot from the Arctic Circle to the Equator.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences yesterday, issued a press release listing all of their Best Foreign Language film submissions, from at least 65 countries.

Here’s the trailer for one of them which was uploaded today – an Ethiopian film covered on S&A last year, Atletu (Athlete), described as: “unique and elegant hybrid of autobiography, biopic and documentary tells the inspiring story of the great Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who in 1960 became the first African athlete to win gold at the Olympics – a new world record, and barefoot at that. Then four years later in Tokyo, he did it all again… this time wearing shoes. And at age 32, Abebe Bikila became the first man to win consecutive marathons at the Olympics. Bikila’s story took a shocking turn after these triumphs, yet nothing could keep him from pursuing his dreams all the way to the finish line...

While I do not think that something as edgy or unusual as Giorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (pictured above) will make the 'final five' short list, but kudos to Greece for throwing it out there.  Perhaps something like Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions will make the cut despite its similarly unsettling subject matter.  Either way, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did put out a big release yesterday with all of their Foreign Language film submissions, 65 of them in total even Greenland, from various countries.  Many of these films have reviews in our archives.

Albania, East West East, Gjergj Xhuvani

Algeria, Hors la Loi ("Outside the Law"), Rachid Bouchareb

Argentina, Carancho, Pablo Trapero

Austria, La Pivellina, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

Azerbaijan, The Precinct, Ilgar Safat

Bangladesh, Third Person Singular Number, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki

Belgium, Illegal, Olivier Masset-Depasse

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Circus Columbia, Danis Tanovic

Brazil, Lula the Son of Brazil,...

Films from Albania, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and Slovenia will compete for Oscars gold in 2011, as Academy Awards officials close the deadline for foreign film entries. Sixty five nations have entered the race for the 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar, including first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland.

Ethiopia will be represented by Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew's "The Athlete", while "Nuummiog" has been selected as Greenland's official entry. France, Finland, Hong Kong, Greece, Latvia, the Philippines, Peru, Mexico, Romania, Russia, South Africa and Spain are also represented in the first Oscars list for 2011.

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on January 25, 2011. Between now and then, the Best Foreign Film list will be dwindled down to five.

65 Countries Enter Race for 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar®

Beverly Hills, CA: Sixty-five countries, including first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 83rd Academy Awards®.

The 2010 submissions are:

.Albania, .East, West, East,. Gjergj Xhuvani, director;

.Algeria, .Hors la Loi. (.Outside the Law.), Rachid Bouchareb, director;

.Argentina, .Carancho,. Pablo Trapero, director;

.Austria, .La Pivellina,. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, directors;

.Azerbaijan, .The Precinct,. Ilgar Safat, director;

.Bangladesh, .Third Person Singular Number,. Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, director;

.Belgium, .Illegal,. Olivier Masset-Depasse, director;

.Bosnia and Herzegovina, .Circus Columbia,. Danis Tanovic, director;

.Brazil, .Lula, the Son of Brazil,. Fabio Barreto, director;

.Bulgaria, .Eastern Plays,. Kamen Kalev, director;

.Canada, .Incendies,. Denis Villeneuve, director;

.Chile, .The Life of Fish,. Matias Bize, director;

.China, .Aftershock,. Feng Xiaogang, director;

.Colombia, .Crab Trap,. Oscar Ruiz Navia, director;

.Costa Rica, .Of Love and Other Demons,. Hilda Hidalgo, director;

.Croatia, .The Blacks,...

Films from Albania, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and Slovenia will compete for Oscars gold in 2011, as Academy Awards officials close the deadline for foreign film entries.

Sixty five nations have entered the race for the 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar, including first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland.

Ethiopia will be represented by Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew's The Athlete, while Nuummiog has been selected as Greenland's official entry.

France, Finland, Hong Kong, Greece, Latvia, the Philippines, Peru, Mexico, Latvia, Hong Kong, Romania, Russia, South Africa and Spain are also represented in the first Oscars list for 2011.

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on 25 January.

Between now and then, the Best Foreign Film list will be dwindled down to five.

I have been keeping track of all of the Foreign Language Oscar submissions in my "The Contenders" section of the site and today the official list of sixty-five films from sixty-five countries was unveiled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration for the 83rd Academy Awards. On January 20, 2011 a shortlist of nine contenders will be announced prior to the naming of the nominees on January 25, 2011.

I have included the complete list directly below, which includes first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland. The only film that was originally thought to be under consideration, but didn't show up on the Academy's final list was Afghanistan's entry, Black Tulip, directed by Sonia Nassery Cole. IMDb doesn't list a release date for the film, which means it may not have met the release requirements in time.

I have linked each film to their corresponding IMDb page for those films not included...

It was announced earlier this week that Arrow Entertainment has acquired worldwide rights to Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew's "The Athlete," winner of the Lions Award for Best Film in the Bright Future Section at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film tells the true story of Olympic marathon champion Abebe Bikila. Arrow Entertainment plans to screen the film to buyers for the first time with the European Film Market at ...

More than three decades after many Ethiopians left their country for exile, there is now a small but mighty handful of films exploring the experience of this diaspora

It is a truism that – agitprop and now tribunal plays aside – it takes quite some time for traumatic events, personal or political, to filter into a culture. Distance is key; time for healing, for perspective, for the discovery of an appropriate idiom. A few years, at least; 10 years. A lifetime.

But how much more complicated, how much slower the process, when it is combined with immigration across continents and languages. There are so often such great wounds – if the trauma was enough to cause people to flee across borders, leave family and friends, survive refugee camps, then healing will be a slow business. Add that to the basic facts of getting by: a new culture, a new language, the subsidiary damage of...