ALTHOUGH it’s not yet been officially announced, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s new film “Wolf Totem” is expected to be China’s submission for this year’s foreign language Academy Award.

    Based on the semi-autobiographical, best-selling novel by Lu Jiamin, writing under the pseudonym Jiang Rong, the film tells of a Chinese student who travels to Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution to live among the nomadic herdsman and there becomes fascinated with the wolves that roam the steppes.

    A Chinese-French coproduction that employs both the Mandarin and Mongolian dialects, the film bowed in China on Feb. 19 and went on to become the 10th highest-grossing film of the year in China, where it’s collected US$110.5 million.

    “Wolf Totem” is being released in the United States through Sony’s Columbia Pictures and will open Sept. 11 on more than 125 screens, including about 100 IMAX auditoriums.

    The project, seven years in the making, required two packs of wolves that were trained over a period of years by Andrew Simpson specifically for use in the film, which was shot in 3-D. Annaud said, “I’m very pleased for my crew and cast. They worked with so much dedication and I feel it’s very important for each of them. I had such a warm welcome over there. I feel grateful to everyone involved with this project.”

    China’s movie authority decides which film to submit and its formal announcement usually comes closer to the Oct. 1 deadline for submissions. While a number of other titles have been said to be in contention, there have been few projects of the caliber of “Wolf Totem” this year. (SD-Agencies)