Aside from best documentary, best foreign film has always been the most problematic Oscar category.

Some of the finest international films (like "Raise the Red Lantern") fail to get nominated because they offer unflattering views of their birth countries.

Other films don’t make the cut (Like "Blue") because they are multi-cultural or made by a director in a different country or language than the one of his or her birth.

As a result of these restrictions and the populist tastes of Oscar voters, the best foreign films rarely get nominated and almost never win. The Cannes Film Festival and Toronto winners are almost always stronger than the best foreign film Oscar nominees.

Nonetheless, the four pictures that I saw that were nominated for best foreign film this year ("The Lives of Others," "Pan’s Labyrinth," "Water," and "Days of Glory") were remarkably solid, and often even inspired. They are at least as accomplished as the films nominated for best picture.

This year’s dark horse nominee ("Days of Glory") is the first ever from Algeria. It’s a WW II film about the often neglected role Africans and Arabs played in the conflict. It is as much about racism and cultural assimilation as it is about war.

"Days of Glory" is about soldiers from Morocco, Senegal, and Algeria who fought just as bravely as their peers for the Allies cause, but they were left out of history books because of cultural bias.

The film follows a small group of soldiers that experience racism in different ways. Mastoid (played by Roschdy Zem) falls for a young French woman, but he faces barriers to interracial relationships. The soldiers of color are also denied tomatoes even though they made the same sacrifices as the white soldiers.

Said (Jamel Debbouze) is a small, sensitive soldier who is on the effeminate side. The other soldiers play big brother to him, and try to prevent him from being annihilated. He assists the commander, and he plays a role similar to Radar in MASH. But in this case there are some homosexual overtones in his relationship with his commander.

Eventually the soldiers land on Marseilles, and they bravely defend a small town against Nazi insurgents. The battle scenes don’t quite equal the ones in "The Big Red One" (Mark Hammil’s best film) or the more recent "Letters to Iwa Jima," but they are powerful and well photographed, nonetheless.

Though the film takes place in the 1940s, its portrayal of Euro-Arab cultural conflict and Europe’s racial tensions make it more relevant than most films that take place today.