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"Ahlat Ağacı / The Wild Pear Tree" is the Oscar contender of Turkey A 17-member board, including representatives of the Culture and Tourism Ministry and Turkish cinema associations, chose the film as Turkey's nominee for the Foreign Language Academy Award in a meeting in Istanbul. A co-production by Turkey, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Katar and Sweden, Ceylan's film was selected from among 12 others. The film tells the story of an aspiring writer who returns to his native village, where he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, only for his father's debts to catch up with him. It saw its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May. In his Cannes review, Variety's Jay Weissberg called the film "another visually rich chamber piece from Nuri Bilge Ceylan that builds elaborate rhetorical set pieces of astonishing density." Described in The Hollywood Reporter's Cannes review as "a slow, dense look at Turkey today" that eschewed Ceylan's habitual lyricism "for a more realistic approach that seems linked to the film's undercurrent of contemporary events," Cinema Guild took U.S. rights on the film in June with plans to release it in early 2019. International sales are handled by Memento Films. Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 22, 2019. The ceremony will take place Feb. 24, 2019.
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