The following 16 films, all from different countries, were submitted for the 40th Academy Awards in the category Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The titles highlighted in blue and yellow were the five nominated films, which came from France, Japan, Spain, Yugoslavia and the eventual winner, Czechoslovakia. The winner, Jiří Menzel's Closely Watched Trains, was a wry comedy about a young man working at a village railway station during Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.[1]
Belgium and Peru submitted films to the competition for the first time.