LOS ANGELES • Hong Kong film Better Days has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Starring Chinese actress Zhou Dongyu and boy band TFBoys member Jackson Yee, the film by Hong Kong director Derek Tsang, 41, puts the spotlight on school bullying.

The film won Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards last year, with Tsang, son of Hong Kong actor Eric Tsang, named Best Director.

Zhou, 29, picked up the Best Actress award while Yee, 20, clinched the Best New Performer award.

Zhou also won Best Actress for the movie at China's Golden Rooster Awards last year.

Better Days will face competition from Another Round (Denmark), Collective (Romania), The Man Who Sold His Skin (Tunisia) and Quo Vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

Quo Vadis, Aida? depicts the lead-up to the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. The film's director Jasmila Zbanic, 46, won the Golden Bear award in Berlin in 2006 for her feature Grbavica, which dealt with the impact of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s on Bosnian society.

Quo Vadis, Aida? has also been nominated this year for the British Academy Film Awards in the best non-English film category, and Zbanic has been nominated for Best Director.

Another nominee, Danish comedy drama Another Round, which focuses on four teachers who embark on a drinking experiment, was a box-office hit in Denmark.

Its director Thomas Vinterberg has also been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars.

Romanian nominee, Collective, is about corruption in the Eastern European country's healthcare system, while Tunisia's The Man Who Sold His Skin is set in the art world.

XINHUA, REUTERS