Mexico has chosen the movie Heli as the country's foreign film submission for the 2013 Academy Awards.

Heli won the ARRI/OSRAM award for best film at the Munich International Film Festival earlier this year and nabbed the director prize at Cannes Film Festival in May. After having it on a 16-film shortlist, Mexico decided on the divisive cartel drama last week.

Director Amat Escalante immediately reacted to the news: "The film is a fiction. It's about characters, a family that is destroyed by the violence and attempts to rebuild. Mexico's drug wars is just the context."

Heli is a shocking film set in a Mexican cartel and tells the story of a love between a young girl and a policeman.

The film beat out Eugenio Derbez's Instructions Not Included, which audiences were rooting for as it is fast becoming one of the most successful foreign films ever released in the United States. Additionally, it was heavily believed that Derbez's popularity and celebrity in Mexico would help the film's chances at being the Academy submission. However, Mexico followed its current trend of picking socially relevant films.

Other films that missed the cut included: Cinco de Mayo, La Vida Precoz y Breve de Sabina Rivas, La Jaula de Oro, and El Premio.

Mexico has been nominated eight times at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, but has never won the Oscar. The most recent films include Alejandor Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, Inarritu's Amores Perros, and Carlos Carrera's El Crimen del Padre Amaro.

Escalante has previously directed the award winning Sangre, as well as Los Bastardos.

Heli is set to compete against 70 plus countries for a spot in the top five shortlist. The last date to submit entries for the foreign-language Academy Awards is October 1st. Oscar nominations will be announced on January 16th and the ceremony will be held on March 2nd at the Dolby Theater.