3 pieces
Gints Zilbalodis made a dialogue-free animated feature in Blender with a team of a dozen, won the Oscar, and put the Latvian film industry on the global animation map. The patient argument is that the form, not the novelty, is the achievement.
A Latvian animated feature made on Blender with a team of fifteen people won the Oscar and beat DreamWorks, Pixar, and Netflix. The reason is not budget. It is silence.
Payal Kapadia's Cannes Grand Prix winner was received, on its US release, as the decade's strongest import from Indian indie cinema. The re-reading is that the film is even stranger, and more formally considered, than the initial reception allowed.