You're reading: Variety: Ukraine, Azerbaijan pick Oscar entries

MOSCOW - Feel-good movies from Ukraine and Azerbaijan are among the latest entries in the race for the foreign language film Oscar.

Mykhailo Illienko’s “Firecrosser” is the true story of a Soviet
wartime hero whose life is transformed when he is sent to one of
Stalin’s Gulags for the “crime” of falling into German hands as a
prisoner of war.

The ace pilot loses his wife to a deceitful best friend who tells
her he’s dead. Released from the Gulag he manages to make his way to
Canada, where in a story arc that must rank among the more unusual in
Soviet times, he ends up becoming the chief of a Red Indian tribe.

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