The Long Odds for a Small Canadian Film The Canadian Philippe Falardeau, who wrote and directed "Monsieur Lazhar," one of the five nominees for best foreign-language film, is at the Sundance Film Festival this week. Early on Tuesday morning, he was in a rented condo with his producers watching the Oscar nominations telecast, and when they heard the word "Canada," he said, "we screamed so loud, with a mixture of joy and relief, that I didn't even hear the title of my film." For Mr. Falardeau, 43, the nomination caps what is already a remarkable journey. As he pointed out in an interview on Tuesday, his is "a small, intimate film" about a difficult subject: the consequences of a popular teacher's suicide on her Montreal pupils and colleagues. It was shot on a modest budget, and though adapted from a French-language play that was a commercial success in his native Quebec, it features no internationally known actors. In fact, several of the children in the cast had never acted before. And to play the title role, the Algerian refugee who offers himself as a substitute teacher, Mr. Falardeau took a big gamble and cast Mohamed Said Fellag, an Algerian comedian with an acidic style who lives and works in Europe. It was an unlikely combination, and when the director finished the editing last year, "I was emotionally exhausted and quite sure this would go under the radar," he said. It just goes to show that there is no recipe, no way to predict how things turn out. "I think there's still a pretty good front-runner in "A Separation,"" Mr. Falardeau said, referring to the Iranian drama, which is up for both foreign-language film and best screenplay. We're going to have to pull a rabbit out of our hat. But you have to believe me when I say this is a huge accomplishment. On Oscar night, of course I'll be wanting it. But right now I'm just very very happy. As it happens, the producers of Mr. Falardeau's film, Luc Dery and Kim McCraw, are the same as those behind last year's Canadian entry, "Incendies," which also received a nomination, is based on a hit play about Arab immigrants to Canada and was written and directed by a friend of Mr. Falardeau's, Denis Villeneuve. Hoping that their good fortune would repeat itself, Mr. Falardeau said, his producers "did the same thing that they did last year, which was to eat Lucky Charms cereal for breakfast."