Directors should get the Best International Film Oscar
Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 6:35PM
Cláudio Alves in Another Round, Best International Feature, Best International Film, Oscars (20), Thomas Vinterberg, foreign films

by Cláudio Alves

While many aspects of the Oscar ceremony annoyed, quite a lot of elements worked to significant effect. Chief among them, the fact winners were allowed to deliver their speeches with no apparent time limit. I don't know about you, but I love long acceptance speeches, especially those that take me on a journey. On the comedic side, we have Daniel Kaluuya, who topped his inspiring sentiment with euphoric comments about his parents having sex. The miracle of life indeed. In contrast, Thomas Vinterberg delivered a gut punch when he spoke about his daughter's tragic death upon accepting the Best International Film statuette for Another Round. It was a great, heartbreaking moment, illuminating the pain that can exist behind fantastic art. 

Considering all that, it's a pity that the Oscar itself doesn't belong to Vinterberg, nor will it be credited as his victory. As it happens, this is the only category where the winner isn't a person…

Technically, countries, not people, win the Best International Film Oscar, previously known as Best Foreign Language Film. It seems a lot of directors get to keep the trophy, but they're never listed anywhere reputable as Oscar winners. The Academy doesn't consider them so. The rule has been in place since the start of the category in the late 40s. Only in 2014 did they even start to engrave the director's name in the statuette's base. Before, it only listed the title of the picture and the victorious nation. Maybe it seems absurd to be bothered by something so minimal, but it feels unfair that not a single person involved with the winning films can claim the victory as theirs.

Because of this, many international filmmakers that one might assume were Oscar winners aren't officially recognized as such. Do you think Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jacques Tati, Vittorio De Sica, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, and Asghar Farhadi are Academy Award winners? You'd be mistaken. All of them directed Best International Film champions, but this prize meant to reward international art draws the line at honoring international artists. Another interesting detail is that all of those directors were nominated for individual achievements in other categories. However, they lost all of those awards bids.


In some regard, their losses can be correlated to the very existence of a Best International Film category. With a ready place to always honor non-English-speaking cinema, voters can feel free to be as Anglo-centric as they want when feeling the rest of their ballots. It isn't to say that all voters think this way, but that the system opens wide the opportunity for such injustices. For example, if the winning film director could claim the award as theirs, we could count Bong Joon-ho as the most honored individual in a single Oscar ceremony for Parasite. He'd be tied with Walter Disney instead of left behind because of a technicality.

Awards aren't everything, of course. Oscar or no Oscar, those directors will forever be remembered as masters of their craft. Their films shall be immortal too, perpetually counted among cinephiles' favorite flicks. Nonetheless, it would be nice for them to be acknowledged by the institution that claims to honor their work. Despite everything, Oscar ends up snubbing the makers of the excellence it enshrines in gold. I'd love for AMPAS to change the rules. Maybe even retroactively count the directors of previous Best International Film victors as Oscar winners. Wouldn't that be nice?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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