Bulgarian film The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner by director Stefan Komandarev is among the nine films that advanced one step closer to winning a nomination for an Academy Award in the best foreign-language film category.

The original list of foreign films competing for the award consisted of 65 titles.

Bulgaria's nominee tells the story of a Bulgarian boy who grows up in Germany. After a car accident he cannot remember even what his name is. In an attempt to cure him from amnesia, his grandfather Bai Dan comes over from Bulgaria to Germany and organises a spiritual journey for his grandson back into his past, to the country where he came from.

The film has so far received more than a dozen different awards in and outside Bulgaria and has enjoyed keen interest among Bulgarian viewers since it was released in 2008. It is considered one of the best achievements of Bulgarian cinema in the past 20 years, which were dogged by a lack of financing and disinterest among audiences.

The nominees for the 82 Academy Awards, popularly known as Oscars, will be announced February 2 and the awards ceremony will be held on March 7.

As in previous years, foreign language film nominations will be determined in two stages. In stage one, a committee of several hundred Los Angeles-based members screened the 65 eligible films. The group's top six choices, plus three additional selections voted by the Academy's Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constituted the shortlist.

The shortlist will be winnowed down to the five nominees by specially invited committees in New York and Los Angeles. They will view the selected films on January 29-31, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.

The 2009 Oscar winner in the best foreign-language film category was Japan's Departures film by director Yojiro Takita.

The other eight films which were short-listed for the award this year are:
El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina) by director Juan Jose Campanella; Samson & Delilah (Australia) by director Warwick Thornton; Un Prophete (France) by director Jacques Audiard; The White Ribbon (Germany) by director Michael Haneke; Ajami (Israel) by directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani; Kelin (Kazakhstan) by director Ermek Tursunov; Winter in Wartime (The Netherlands) by director Martin Koolhoven; The Milk of Sorrow (Peru) by director Claudia Llosa.