This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China may submit the movie "Wolf Totem", a co-production between China and France, as its 2016 Academy Awards best foreign language film entry. The announcement came after another contender lost the bid recently.
The producers of the other movie "Mountains May Depart", directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke, conceded in a statement that his movie failed in the bid to represent China at the Academy Awards.
The announcement ended a fierce competition between the producers of "Wolf Totem" and "Mountains May Depart".
China's film bureau is scheduled to announce the final decision early this month. If it is chosen, "Wolf Totem" will become the second China-France co-production to be submitted after last year's "The Nightingale".
In a previous statement summarizing the development of China's movie industry, the film bureau said "Wolf Totem" was able to achieve box office success, at almost 700 million yuan, roughly 109 million U.S. dollars, because it tells a Chinese story in an international way.
Based on a popular Chinese novel, the movie features a young man's obsession with wolf packs in the Inner Mongolia grasslands.
The last Chinese submission to be named an official nominee by the Academy was "Hero", directed by Zhang Yimou, in 2003.
