As the summer stands between us and the awards season to come, Cláudio Alves and Juan Carlos Ojano discuss some of this year’s new Oscar rules, focusing on their beloved Best International Film race.
Visar Morina's SHAME AND MONEY became the first film eligible for the Best International Feature Oscar this season, when it won the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
CLÁUDIO: Much was said about the Oscar rule changes when they were first announced at the beginning of May, with various opinions going around. While the possibility of actors double-dipping in the same category for the first time since the 1930s is enticing, the transformations to the Best International Film race are perhaps more important and worthy of discussion. And who better to discuss it with than Juan Carlos Ojano, the only person I know who has seen every single nominee in the category's history and discussed them through The One-Inch Barrier podcast? But first, let's assess the rules themselves…
In a radical change in process, a selection of film festivals was chosen to serve as qualifying entry points into the competition. For instance, this year's Golden Bear winner, Yellow Letters, is already an official contender by virtue of its victory with the Wim Wenders-presided Berlin jury. Theoretically, this allows for dissident filmmakers to compete without being at the mercy of their country's selection. There is also a symbolic move toward acknowledging the directors as winners without making it official. At a technical level, this will remain the only Oscar category where the awards recognize no particular individual. It’s frustrating, but one can nevertheless see this as making a symbolic gesture toward a hypothetical future change.
To kickstart our conversation, maybe you can tell me what you felt in the moment you read these rules. I confess my immediate reaction was ecstatic, but the more I thought about the new rules, the more I felt they were insufficient or concerningly flawed. What say you?
JUAN CARLOS: Yes, I'm that bitch. The one who — in the middle of a raging pandemic — decided to go through this category that not a lot of people, even self-declared Oscar fans, cared about until Parasite's victory lap changed it. And that's where we first met, too! So I know you're one of those who also care about this category and world cinema in its entirety.
Weirdly, I had a minimal reaction to the announcement. I know it's a long-overdue change for Oscar pundits, but my feelings were more about concern or a need for clarification. It remains puzzling that the award is not attributed to the director and/or producers, unlike its counterpart 'film' awards such as Animated Feature/Short, Documentary Feature/Short, and Live Action Short. Before, it was awarded to the country, a weird technicality, but it makes sense in my head. At least it's consistent. It's a race between countries.
With this rule change, countries will still be able to submit one film as their official submission. Meanwhile, the films that win in festivals that can qualify despite not being their country's official submissions - are they going to still be attributed to their country of origin? In the case of international co-productions or dissenting filmmakers, which country gets to call dibs on the film? Or will there be cases where no country will be attached to the film? So who wins this award? Just 'the film' itself?
Turkish-German director İlker Çatak won the Golden Bear for YELLOW LETTERS, now eligible for the Best International Film Oscar.
Which leads me to my biggest concern: while there are pros here, I would not want certain countries to lionize this category. We are aware of how unbalanced the coverage of world cinema already is. This imbalance is also evident in how national cinemas operate: some countries produce hundreds of films per year, while others, whether because of the industry's youth or socio-political unrest that disrupts film production, produce only a handful. Studying the history of this category, you see a pattern. Countries with a constant presence include France, Italy, Germany, etc. What I wouldn't want to happen with these new rules is, say, two to three films from France taking up space in the category.
That is why, despite the calls for change with the 'submission process', that part always gives me a pause. Can we please have a mechanism that would still ensure equal and fair presence in this category? May we ensure that these changes won't further perpetuate the imbalance in the reception of world cinema or aggravate it?
CLÁUDIO: I share a lot of the same fears. Without a cap in place, it's possible for one country to have something like five contenders in the race and snag more than one slot in the final lineup. And, honestly, that doesn't seem fair at all. Moreover, it seems significantly more unfair than the system we have now, which has garnered its fair share of criticism. Hopefully, this is catastrophizing, and we'll never have to face such a situation, but I don't have enough faith in AMPAS voters to feel secure.
The European bias is very real, going far beyond the Oscars - readers will know my constant grumblings about the major festival’s biases in constructing their main competitions. But now, the skewed fest selection process has become tied to the Academy in some ways. Take Cannes, which hardly ever programs Latin American cinema, much less African cinema, in its Main Competition. So, the fest's addition of the rulebook qualifier means those underrepresented continents are now even more disadvantaged than their Euro adversaries. As someone who sees their fair share of world cinema, I can say it's not for lack of quality that these things happen. Biases, even if non-malicious in intent, will always skew the race away from a real sense of fairness, yet when introduced, I don't think new rules should exacerbate these troublesome dynamics. An equitable process and system are the goal, right?
When Cristian Mungiu's last Palme d'Or winner was snubbed by the Academy, it led to a change in rules. Could FJORD rectify this old grudge?
I'd like to further discuss the specific festivals chosen by AMPAS and why they might not be the best choice, but first, what about a thought exercise? How would the race have been affected if these rules had been in place last year? These are the pictures that would have qualified through film festivals and the countries that produced them:
- CACTUS PEARS, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade - Canada, India, UK (Sundance World Dramatic Competition)
- DREAMS (SEX LOVE), Dag Johan Hagerud - Norway (Berlin Golden Bear)
- GLOAMING IN LUOMU, Zhang Lu - China (Busan Best Film Award)
- IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, Jafar Panahi - France, Iran, Luxembourg (Cannes Palme d'Or)
- TO THE VICTORY!, Valentyn Vasyanovych - Lithuania, Ukraine (TIFF Platform Award)
JUAN CARLOS: Hmmm, I don't think Gloaming in Luomu or To the Victory! would have factored into the race. Dreams would have been a wildcard contender. Cactus Pears could have factored into the conversation and gotten a shortlist slot, similar to Santosh in 2024, when it competed for the UK rather than India. Which leaves us with It Was Just an Accident. With the rule in place, I don't think France would have submitted it, but it still would have been nominated. Maybe Nouvelle Vague would have been the official French submission (which, I know, you would be against).
CLÁUDIO: I feel you're right that France would've sent Nouvelle Vague in addition to It Was Just an Accident. It would have made the shortlist and likely earned a nomination over Spain's Sirat or Tunisia's The Voice of Hind Rajab. Considering all we know about Panahi, I would imagine he'd try to have the film recognized as Iranian so we wouldn't be in the presence of such a flagrant case of two French productions monopolizing the category, but it still irks me a tad. Alas, the present norms don't have any measure in place for these scenarios we are hypothesizing, whether because AMPAS didn't consider them or because they don't care. A good percentage of Academy members and even Oscar obsessives would be fine with three European countries nominated and nothing else. Perhaps I'm being ungenerous, though I don't feel too off the mark.
JUAN CARLOS: Yeah, they wouldn't care. I'd even go so far as to say that the most diverse this category has been was during the period 2008-19, when there was an 'executive committee' that "saved" films for inclusion on the shortlist. Notice how the said era produced eclectic nominees like The Milk of Sorrow (Peru), Dogtooth (Greece), The Missing Picture (Cambodia), Omar (Palestine), Timbuktu (Mauritania), Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), Theeb (Jordan), and Tanna (Australia). Many of these countries became first-time nominees! In my opinion, from 2020 onwards, there was a sign of safety among the eventual nominees, barring a few inclusions. Removing that limit on films per country, I would argue, could even exacerbate that penchant for going with the usual suspects (i.e., countries with established industries and a presence in world cinema and Oscar history - most of them from Europe).
CLÁUDIO: But going back to the festivals. Why these particular ones? Berlin, Cannes, and Venice are no-brainers, but Busan, Toronto, and Sundance made me scratch my head in confusion. Those competitions are tiny, and, in TIFF's case, not even the best representative of quality world cinema at the fest. That would be Wavelengths.
NOUVELLE VAGUE might have been a factor in the Oscar race if these rules had been implemented last season.
One must suppose there were industry pressures and economic incentives at play to make these festivals qualifying events, while ignoring others like Locarno, Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, and even Tokyo. Surely the criteria should focus on the diversity of countries represented, the number of world premieres, and the relative size of the competitive slates. I'd even say that, before including something like Sundance, perhaps extending this qualifying honor to the Grand Prix winner at the big three European fests would feel more appropriate.
This year, that would mean Minotaur qualifies, when in reality it'll struggle to be submitted, since Russia will surely snub Zvyagintsev. That brings me to another point: how knowing the effects these prizes will have on Oscar eligibility and, by consequence, distribution opportunities worldwide might influence these festivals' juries or shape analysis of their choices in new, mayhap unfair ways. Should the Cannes jury have prioritized a dissident filmmaker over Mungiu, whose Fjord would almost certainly have been submitted by Norway or Romania? Then again, I don't want the awards race to inform how these festivals are run.
JUAN CARLOS: I will second your point regarding these festivals. It's quite arbitrary, and the limited number of films eligible for this new consideration isn't as generous as it could be.
Extending it to the Grand Prix, Jury Prize, and/or Best Director might help. I've also mentioned an example in our previous chats. What's stopping Norway or Romania from submitting Fjord as their official submission, even if winning the Palme d'Or already makes it automatically qualified? A wider net of sanctioned festivals and the number of awards-qualifying categories make more sense. Because if we keep these random standards in place, those festivals, intentionally or not, can fall into the trap of being only seen as stepping stones for a planned Oscar journey. Nothing bad with that (and it's not as if that's not happening already), but I'm hoping that they resist the temptation of becoming just another cog in the Western-oriented machinery that is the awards season. Because if that is the case, how world cinema is shaped is most likely going to be dictated again by the American sensibilities, which is, by extension, a manifestation of its neocolonial domination on our culture.
Lav Diaz's MAGELLAN deserved to win it all, becoming the first Filipino film to earn Oscar gold.
It just dawned on me: you and I are from two of the countries (Portugal and the Philippines) with the most submissions in this category that have not yet been nominated. We even have a recurring joke about which of our countries will get nominated first. I say Portugal, you say the Philippines. So yes, there is some baggage for us when discussing this topic.
CLÁUDIO: I have accepted that I'll die without Portugal ever being nominated. But I'm rooting for the Philippines, though. You should already have been nominated and won!
JUAN CARLOS: I agree. We should've been nominated a few times now. Magellan, Norte, the End of History, Of the Flesh. Those gems. How about the Portuguese submissions? Which ones should've already gotten Portugal? Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One is a pretty staggering piece of work.
CLÁUDIO: To be specific, the Philippines should've won for Magellan last year! I know I've been teasing a review of that Lav Diaz epic for ages now, but I really must get to it, as the film remains my favorite of 2025, regardless of categorization, and is newly available on the Criterion Channel. Oh well, when the Oscar nod comes, it'll probably be for a lesser work by a lesser filmmaker than Diaz, whose cinema is monumental but surely beyond what most Oscar voters are willing to watch, let alone endorse. I guess these new rules would've actually helped him, back in the day, as his Golden Lion winner, The Woman Who Left, would have become automatically eligible, bypassing the commission that went with Brillante Mendoza's Ma' Rosa instead.
Regarding Portugal's submissions, I think we deserved to make the final five many years. Consider the many times we submitted Manoel de Oliveira's masterpieces, such as Francisca in 1982 and Abraham's Valley in 1993, and Joaquim Pinto's What Now? Remind Me in 2014, Miguel Gomes' brilliant Arabian Nights in 2015 and Grand Tour in 2024, the chiaroscuro portraiture of Pedro Costa's Vitalina Varela in 2020. Alas, it hasn't happened, and, again, I feel it'll never happen.
JUAN CARLOS: We both love films from all over the world, despite the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles (yep, I did that). So, to see the structural imbalances that abound in the cinematic scene will always raise a red flag for you and for me. As someone who attends and covers multiple festivals and is an awards voter, you know it more than I do. And the festivals that they have selected to be qualifiers should also be scrutinized for their programming history, as you said.
ANATOMY OF A FALL would've almost surely won Best International Film had it been eligible. These new rules would have made that possible.
I have proposed something that could minimize the chances (though still not foolproof): kind of like how they used to do with acting categories, you can submit as many as you want, but you can only get nominated for one. For example, in 2023, France could have submitted The Taste of Things, while the Cannes-awarded Anatomy of a Fall would also be in contention. Two representatives for France, but in counting for the final ballot, only the one with the highest votes gets nominated. To avoid the monopoly. How does that sound?
CLÁUDIO: Sounds good. For now, I’d also propose expanding the number of qualifying festivals, broadening eligibility to second-place prize winners at larger events. It's not perfect yet, but it's better than the current state of affairs.
I just feel that, when given enough leeway to make their own issues worse through imperfect regulation, AMPAS often scores an own goal. But hey, I'm eager to be proven wrong and, to be fair, the increasingly international voter base has been an improvement in some regards. Heavens, how I wish the 2010s committee were back. Bring it back! PLEASE!!!
JUAN CARLOS: I second bringing back the committee save. To more exciting choices! To more wonderful films getting the recognition they deserve!
What say you, dear reader? What do you make of the new rules and how they might affect the Best International Film Oscar race?