Adrián Saba’s first feature film could earn him an Oscar nomination…

The half-Peruvian filmmaker’s sci-fi drama The Cleaner has been selected as Peru’s submission for the foreign language category at the Academy Awards.

The announcement was made by the South American country’s Ministry of Culture, which established a committee for the selection formed by Javier Alfredo Portocarrero, Rodrigo Ernesto Portales, Rafael Álvaro Sedano and Pierre Emile Vandoorne.

The committee’s selection act stated the film was chosen “for its original proposal of an apocalyptic Lima, where loneliness and strain are shown through an effective use of cinematographic elements, expressing a city that slowly fades out.”

The Cleaner tells the story of a forensic cleaner (played by Victor Prada) who takes charge of an 8-year-old (Adrian Du Bois) orphaned by a strange epidemic in Lima.

The film won a Special Mention of the New Directors Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival last year.