Spain Selects Querejeta’s “15 Years and One Day” for Oscars’ Best Foreign Film Consideration

She’s won a Goya Award for her work behind the lens… And, now Gracia Querejeta is hoping to win an Oscar.

Spain has selected the 51-year-old Spanish director’s latest film 15 Years and One Day as its entry for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Academy Awards.

15 Years and One Day

Chosen by the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the film stars Spanish actress Maribel Verdu and tells the story of an unemployed mother and her adolescent son who is expelled from school and sent to live with his grandfather.

Querejeta is daughter of late Spanish film producer Elias Querejeta, who died in June.

15 Years and One Day, which earned several prizes at the Malaga Film Festival, was released in Spain in June and has earned about $544,000 at the box office.

The U.S. film academy will select finalists for the Oscar next January with the awards announced a month later.

The film will also represent Spain in Mexico’s Ariel prizes.

Spain, which has won four Oscars for best foreign language film, submitted the black-and-white silent film Blancanieves, which also stars Verdu, last year, but failed to bag a nomination.

Spain’s last film to win the Best Foreign Language Film prize was 2004’s The Sea Inside, starring Javier Bardem.

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