Academy members who volunteer for the nominating committees on Best International Feature Film are currently choosing their favourites from the available 93 films. Voting on this first round closes on the 15th but one country that won't be honored this season, no matter how voting goes, is The Philippines. They didn't submit. That's unusual for them.
The absence of The Philippines from Oscar voting has prompted a hand-wringing statement from the Directors Guild of the Philippines which reads as follows...
It is a great disappointment that the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) did not submit an official entry to the International Foreign Film category of the 2022 OSCAR Awards.
To our knowledge, this will only be the second time the Philippines has not submitted an entry to the Oscars, dismaying gven that the OSCAR eligibility rules in this pandemic year have accomodated streaming and online jury voting, making a push from our local producers more feasible. All the MMFF* films would have been eligible and some acclaimed films that were released in 2021 including MacArthur ALejandre's Tagpuan, Erik Matti's Venice-winning The Missing 8, Antoinette Jadaone's Tallinn-premiering FanGirl & Avid Liongoren's Fantasia-awarded Hayop Ka!.
This missed opportunity offers a good chance to review our country's processes on submission of Philippine entries to the OSCAR Awards. In the spirit of self-regulation, the DGPI invites film workers to discuss and create a private-sector, industry-led initiative in resolving procedures for our future OSCAR entries.
As our industry struggles to rise above survival, some changes are necessary.
*MMFF refers to the Metro Manila Film Festival.
While it's true that the Philippines has only missed submitting in one other year in the 21st century (2005), their track record in the 20th century was much spottier. They submitted about twice a decade until 1995 when they began to submit each year. The Film Academy of the Philippines was created in 1982 and they've been responsible for submissions since then. Before the Academy was founded, various societies and institutes made the choice.
The Missing 8
The DGPI would clearly like FAP to rethink the whole process since they dropped the ball this year. The three and a half hour long mystery The Missing 8 (reviewed) appeared to be a strong contender given the Best Actor win at Venice for John Arcilla and that the film had won fans as high profile as Cynthia Erivo and Bong Joon-Ho. But, contrary to popular belief, AMPAS here in America has no say over which films are submitted or how a country chooses that one specific film each year, though they do set the technical requirements for eligibility: release date windows, not too much English, and the more subjective and occassionally contentious matter of whether enough creative personnel on the film are actually from the country who is submitting it.
As recently discussed, the Philippines are among the most persistent countries that Oscar has not yet honored. In fact, they're the only country that submitted in the very first official year of the category (1956, when Italy's La Strada won) that still hasn't won the statue let alone been nominated.