Countries pick Oscar entries

Indian has chosen the popular Devdas

The buzz of the Oscars is in the air again as six countries announce their entries for the best foreign language film.

Sex, drugs, murder and love all feature in the selections vying for the prestigious award which can help put a country's movie industry on the world stage.

No Man's Land won the 2002 best foreign language film award, giving Bosnia its first ever Oscar win.

Sweden has unveiled its entry as Lukas Moodysson's $3m (£1.9m) movie Lilya 4-Ever, despite it being largely in Russian.

The film revolves around the sex-trafficking trade and a teenage girl who moves from the former Soviet Union to Sweden with her boyfriend.

Brazil has plumped for Fernando Meirelles' Cidade de Deus (City of God), which as taken the country by storm, producing its biggest grossing domestic film in 10 years.

Based on the semi-autobiographical book by Paulo Lins, it tells the tale of two boys growing up in a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro whose journey takes them in different directions as one becomes a photographer and the other a drug dealer.

The film gained worldwide notoriety after drug lord Paulo Sergio Magno was arrested while waiting to see the film at a Brazilian cinema.

Assasination

India's most expensive movie ever - with a budget of 500 million rupees (£6.6m) - was chosen by a jury of representatives of various film organisations.

Devdas is based in on a 1917 Indian novel which has inspired seven films in four languages as well as a silent version, and stars Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai.

Poland has submitted Piotr Trzaskalski's Edi for consideration and Thailand has plumped for Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Mon-Rak Transistor movie about singer who gives up everything to find fame.

China's entry Hero, about a plot to assassinate an emperor-in-waiting, was screened in one cinema for one week in order for it to qualify for selection.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will chose its five nominations for the best foreign language category on 11 February, ahead of Oscar night on 23 March.