Small Australian film – Samson and Delilah is officially Australia’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscar Academy Awards.

Much of the flick’s dialogue is in the indigenous dialect of Walpiri, thereby being eligible for the category. Australia has never had a film selected to be a finalist in the Foreign Language category, so a potential debut slot for Samson And Delilah definitely would be something to write home about.

First-time feature director Warwick Thorton’s tale of a runaway indigenous teen couple won the prestigious Camera d’Or award at Cannes this year, which catapulted it into the limelight. Paired with fantastic critical reviews, Samson And Delilah has also been one of the most commercially successful Australian films at the box office for 2009.

Only three other Australian films have been submitted in the past ten years for the Best Foreign Film Oscar – Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes (indigenous languages), Tony Ayre’s The Home Song Stories (Catonese and Mandarin) and Steve Jacob’s La Spagnola (Spanish and Italian).

There are 65 films from around the world who are battling for the golden statuette. This number will be reduced to five finalists when nominations are announced on February 2, before the March 7 ceremony.