The 82nd annual Academy Awards will be held this coming Sunday and as usual French cinema has a chance to bring home one or more of the movie industry's most coveted trophies. It'll be difficult to beat 2008 when Marion Cotillard won best actress for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in "La Môme" (La vie en rose).  But French films have a real  chances of winning in various categories.

France's best shot is in the foreign film category where the powerful prison drama "Un Prophète" (A Prophet) is in the running. Most critics are sure that the movie will give Germany's "The White Ribbon", - the frontrunner and last year's Cannes festival winner - stiff competition.

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose previous films include "Sur mes lèvres" (Read my lips) and "De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté" (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), "Un prophète" follows Malik (Played by newcomer Tahar Rahim), a 19-year-old illiterate French-Arab petty crook who is sentenced to six years in prison for an unspecified crime and will gradually gain power among the reigning Corsican mafia.

"A Prophet" deserves all the praise it has been getting. With great emotional intensity, Audiard has crafted a riveting drama with a realistic story and an amazing cast that included numerous former prisoners who appeared as extras. Malik is not exactly a model prisoner but as in most good crime movies, we root for him through the entire movie.

"A Prophet" was the winner of the Grand Jury prize at last year's Cannes film festival and has been popular with French moviegoers. This year, it has already been named best foreign film at the BAFTA awards, was voted the Film of the Year by the London Film Critic's Circle Awards and triumphed at the "Cesar" awards last weekend, picking up 9 prizes at France's version of the Oscars, including best film, best actor, best screenplay and best director. A win at the year's academy awards seems like the next logical step!

French films have been extremely successful at the Oscars with 38 nominations in the foreign movie category. There have been 12 French winners - second only to the 13 winning films from Italy.

Some past French winners include Rene Clement's "Jeux Interdits" (Forbidden Games) in 1952, Claude Lelouch's "Un homme et une femme" (A Man and a Woman) in 1966 and Régis Warnier"s "Indochine" in 1992.

Other French candidates for this year's ceremony are two French shorts that will compete against each other in the short film race: "French Roast", a story set in a bistro where an uptight gentleman suddenly realizes he doesn't have any money to pay for his espresso and "Logorama," a cultural critique which imagines Los Angeles as a town constructed of nothing but corporate logos.

Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas's "Loin de Paname" for Faubourg 36 (Paris 36) is one of the nominees for original song, while composer Alexandre Desplat has scored his third Oscar nomination in the Best Original score category for "Fantastic Mr. Fox".

Bruno Delbonnel has a chance to win the cinematography trophy for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and Catherine Leterrier will compete in the Costume Design category for "Coco avant Chanel"(Coco before Chanel).

Allez La France!

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