Loveless (2017)

Let me start off by saying that this is an excellent movie that has so many great things to say about what happens when you do not put your children first in your life.  The cinematography is fantastic, and the state of modernity mixed with decay s so beautifully portrayed as to not be off putting.
However, if there was an award for the bleakest family depicted in an Oscar nominated movie, this would win.  That is saying something, because the competition in that category is remarkably stiff, what with I, Tonya and The Florida Project in the mix.  Frankly, Frances McDormand's character in Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, who says angrily to her daughter "I hope you get raped" in response to her daughter saying that would happen to her if she could not get the car, and then it does actually happen isn't even in contention this year.  This is the worst.
It was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category, and it comes to us from Russia.  The reviews that I read ahead of time take a 10,000 foot view on how it reflects on the state of the modern Russian state and the culture therein.  That may well be the case, but for me it was hard to focus on that because of how completely horrible the two parents of this shy and awkward preteen.  What unfolds after they fight over who will take him in the divorce is both shocking and believable.