Oscar's International Race Pt 1 - The Female Directors
Monday, October 7, 2019 at 3:54PM The Academy has officially announced list of 93 contenders -- an all time record -- for this year's Best International Feature Film Oscar (submission chart here). So let's dive in!
Last year's sole female nominee for Best International Feature, Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) is in front of the camera this time for Lebanon's new submission "1982"
by Nathaniel R
We've been tracking the just renamed foreign-language film race for so long that we love to dig in to stats a bit. You may recall that last year 20 of the 87 pictures were directed or co-directed by women. This year 28 of the 93 contenders are -- that's 30% of the list which is easily an all-time record! Here's another promising note for the future in regards to gender parity: female directors made only 2 of the nominated foreign-language films in the first quarter century of this category but things opened in the 1980s with four nominees from female directors, there were four again in the 1990s, and then seven in the 2000s. Though the 2010s have only seen five thus far, the trend is still promising; in the past four consecutive years one of the nominees has come from a female auteur:
2015 Mustang (France) by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
2016 Toni Erdmann (Germany) by Maren Ade
2017 On Body and Soul (Hungary) by Idilko Enyedi
2018 Capernaum (Lebanon) by Nadine Labaki
Will the trend continue this year? Here are the 29 women who will be trying to make that happen.
The 29 Women Competing in the Best International Feature Race
* means they co-directed their film
