Oscar night is over four months away - March 5th - but the squabbling has already started over some of the national entries for the best foreign-language film award.

In Venezuela, Secuestro Express director Jonathan Jakubowicz is claiming that the national nominating body had assured him of selection and he's blaming President Hugo Chavez's government for the nomination going instead to Alfredo Anzola's 1888, about a fictional visit by Jules Verne to Venezuela. Jakubowicz points out that his own film has been a local hit whereas 1888 lasted in cinemas for just a fortnight. The country's vice-president, Vicente Rangel, allegedly described Secuestro Express, which deals with a spate of kidnappings in Caracas, as "a miserable film with no artistic value and a falsification of the truth."

Meanwhile, the Academy has rejected the Italian nomination of Private, Saverio Costanzo's film about a Palestinian family, because it's not "predominantly" in Italian. As a gesture of solidarity with Costanzo, producer Aurelio di Laurentiis withdrew his film, Manual of Love, which was the other front-runner, and a replacement finally was found in Cristina Comencini's Don't Tell.

And there has been a flap in France, where many in the industry believe that March of the Penguins (pictured) should have been selected as the national entry instead of Christian Carion's Joyeux Noël, which is a French co-production with four other countries and in French, German and English.