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Why International Features Earn Oscar Nominations Across All Categories

Why International Features Earn Oscar Nominations Across All Categories


A musical about crimes and identity; a searing drama about political and familial oppression; another about an activist searching for her missing husband; documentaries about sexual assault as told by the victim, about undoing centuries of imperialism and about Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank; and a beautiful and wordless animated film about animals cooperating to survive after a flood.

These movies — double Golden Globe winner “Emilia Pérez,” “Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “I’m Still Here,” “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “No Other Land” and Globe winner “Flow” — have two things in common: They were all made overseas and they’re all generating legitimate Oscar buzz beyond the international feature film category.

Sure, some films and filmmakers have always broken through that barrier: Fellini, Truffaut, Bergman and some of their peers in Italy, France and Sweden earned directing and writing nominations, while actors like Sophia Loren and Liv Ullman got nods too. (In 1998, Fernanda Montenegro became the first Brazilian actress nominated for lead actress, for Walter Salles’ “Central Station”; while she has a cameo in Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” her daughter, Fernanda Torres, is in the lead actress race her starring role in the film.)

Things shifted a bit at the start of the 21st century with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and the rise of Pedro Almodóvar, whose films have earned nominations for score, screenplay and actors like Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. But the floodgates opened in 2018 with “Roma” (nominated for nine awards outside international feature, winning director and cinematography Oscars) and the following year with “Parasite” (nominated for five others, winning best picture, director and screenplay).

Now international films are regularly earning nominations in cinematography (six times since 2018) and even makeup (four times) and visual effects (the last two years, for the first time ever). There have been seven screenplays nominated across the two groups and that doesn’t even acknowledge the way lines have blurred in recent years, with American films like “Minari” and “Past Lives” that are heavily subtitled. Those films, along with “Roma” and “Parasite,” also represent the new diversity looking beyond Western Europe. (International documentaries have regularly earned nominations but there has been a notable uptick, with 14 nominations in last five years.)

Some of this shift comes from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences creating a younger and more diverse membership, but it was aided by the organization’s outreach to voters emphasizing that these films are eligible across all categories. (And while smaller films were once limited to festivals and arthouses in big cities, voters can now easily watch everything at home if need be.)

“It was inspiring to see what happened with ‘Parasite,’ and that triggered a democratization of possibilities,” says Salles, who adds that streaming helped change perceptions, with audiences showing an appetite for foreign-language films (and TV series like “Squid Games”) with subtitles. “It’s always better when a field becomes more polyphonic and more diverse,” he says.

Latvian Gints Zilbalodis, director of “Flow,” says filmmaking is “less centralized now.”

Technological advances “made it easier to make films in places where there isn’t a big industry,” he adds, noting that his crew created “our own industry just to make this film.”

“When you’re making something from scratch you’re not bound to tradition and you’re forced to come up with original ways of telling stories — it’s not just the different types of stories but how they’re being told,” he says, adding that audiences and voters now seem ready for these different voices and fresh takes.

“Dahomey” director Mati Diop adds that “there are now more voices from different parts of the world,” noting that many, like her, belong to both Western and non-Western cultures. “We have the storytelling and industrial tools of the Western world and more directors are using the tools of cinema to reveal stories from a post-colonial viewpoint, to shine light on communities that had fewer possibilities to express themselves.”

Not all communities can easily express themselves, of course. Palestinian Basel Adra was beaten by Israelis while filming for “No Other Land,” and “Seed of the Sacred Fig” director Mohammad Rasoulof had to flee Iran to avoid arrest for his anti-regime work. (The film even incorporates real footage of authorities beating citizens.) The film is mostly German financed, so its German producers lobbied their home country to select the film.

Rasoulof hopes for further changes to allow for more Oscar consideration for films like his. “I’m sure it’s not easy to come up with a new system that allows them to really assess all films from all countries,” he says. “But it’s so important because many filmmakers in so many countries are taken out of the equation, and I don’t think we can allow the mechanisms of censorship to oppress artistic freedom.”

Nominations are vital for more than just the gratification that comes with recognition. They bring viewers to small films that otherwise easily get lost in the ceaseless flow of content.

“Nominations give an opportunity for films like these to just be seen because it’s hard to compete with these huge studios and the big marketing campaigns they have,” says Zilbalodis, adding that a nomination can help an independent filmmaker get their next project off the ground.

“Nominations bring more light to the film and more audiences to get into the conversation,” Diop says. “The goal is always about visibility and raising awareness.”

Says Adra about “No Other Land”: “Being nominated or winning the Oscar will make sure our story is known.” He and co-director Yuval Abraham note that its anti-Israeli content has made finding U.S. distribution difficult, but Oscar attention could change that. (Abraham especially wants American audiences to see the film because “the bulldozers destroying Basel’s community are made in the U.S. and the soldiers guarding them are using weapons funded by the U.S, so our documentary is not made in the U.S. but it is in a way responding to U.S. foreign policy.”)

Adra adds, however, that he started filming originally just to document the injustices as evidence — “the camera is maybe the only tool we have besides our steadfastness” — and that the film has already achieved “big success” beyond his dreams. “We wish millions more will see it and the Oscar would make the success even bigger but if it doesn’t happen, I will not be sad.”

Abraham adds that if they’re nominated, they’ll be “on top of the world for a night” but then they will immediately have to “get back to the struggle and to reality. We have no illusion that it’ll change everything. We will continue to do our work on the ground.”

Rasoulof says there’s symbolic value in any nominations too. “They’d not only ensure these films reach a larger audience but also give an amazing signal to the many filmmakers across the world working under similar circumstances, under similar duress: ‘We see you now.’”

In an era of closing borders and rising xenophobia, especially in the U.S. after an election that revolved around those issues, the filmmakers say nominations for international films are a hopeful sign.

“Culture can unite us,” Zilbalodis says. We can see ourselves while experiencing these stories and see how we are maybe more similar than we are not to these other people.”

Salles agrees, saying he became a filmmaker in part because “cinema was about discovering what I didn’t know about; it allowed me to understand the world was much wider than I ever thought it could be.”

Movies, like books and music, he says, are “great instruments for opening the possibilities to understanding human nature. And at the end of the day, we need that to get out of the political mess that we are in.”



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