Top Ten: The Countries Oscar Forgot To Honor

by Nathaniel R

Any discussion of Oscar's Best International Feature Film competition throughout history begins with Italy and France. They dominated the early years and though they rarely win now they can still generate buzz with comparative ease (including this year with Hand of God and Titane). Oscar voters have (virtually) travelled to every continent and every major film market at least once or twice since the birth of the category in the 1950s. Their choices don't always reflect where the hot spots in world cinema are, though -- They notoriously missed the entirety of the Romanian New Wave in the Aughts, the provocative if brief Dogme 95 period in Denmark, apart from Japan they're super stingy with Asian cinema in general to the point where it took an international blockbuster ($259 million globably for Parasite) for them to finally notice what was happening in South Korea. Still, it's a fascinating category both for its triumphs and its failures.

All that said it's also worth repeating that no one is ever truly fair to Oscar in their critiques. It's an impossible sisphyean task to sum up the best of what's happening in non English language cinema throughout history via only five titles each season, especially since you can't control which titles will be in the mix and you cant have more than one per country. 

Here are the 10 admirably persistent countries that keep trying despite Oscar's refusal to acknowledge them. They've submitted the most often without receiving a single nomination. Will their fates change this year?

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Thankful for... Juan Carlos Ojano

This year for our "thankful for" column I'm interviewing the team (well, the non-shy ones) so you can get to know them better and so I can express my sincere gratitude that they're showcased here on the site. Today, JUAN CARLOS OJANO.

Juan Carlos lives in the Philippines and began writing for The Film Experience in mid 2020. We were all trapped inside due to the COVID-19 pandemic at the time. Human connection was scarce so thank the cinematic gods for zoom sessions with Team Experience! Juan Carlos shares our collective TFE passion for actresses + Best International Feature Film. He put the latter into action creating the podcast "One Inch Barrier" where he reviews each year of that competition. He got personal with a Call Me By Your Name piece, revisited Spotlight, wrote numerous odes to The Handmaid's Tale,and just launched a biweekly series on female directors called "Through Her Lens" that I really hope you will obsess over. I'm already wondering which female directors he'll be looking at from the 00s and earlier when they were less frequently honored and discussed.

HERE'S OUR SHORT INTERVIEW...

When did you first fall in love with the movies?

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Cannes Diary #2: New Ozon and old Japanese sensations

by Elisa Giudici

At the premiere of "Everything Went Fine"

The Festival has really begun and I finally discovered where the press room is inside the enormous Palais. Free coffees and soft drinks for journalists are a treat I never experienced at other festivals (so I'm feeling spoiled). The room is lovely with its wooden tables and cream colored seats with a view on the blue sea. The day after Annette, it's still the first question everyone asks: do you like it or not? I've already had interesting discussion about the movie with a couple of colleagues. I am really curious to see how it will be received by broader audience after the "festival bubble" ends.

But on to the day two screenings...

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Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Filipinos at the Oscars

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Coen Brothers’ western epic True Grit, an adaptation of the 1968 novel of the same name. The film stars Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. However, at the center of the film is then-13 year old Hailee Steinfeld. She plays Mattie Ross, the strong-willed daughter of a man murdered by a notorious outlaw (Brolin). She then hires Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to hunt down the outlaw. Steinfeld’s performance received critical acclaim at the time and she became the ninth youngest nominee ever for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. She was 14 years and 45 days of age at the time of nominations.

Another remarkable record is that she became the first actor of known Filipino descent to be nominated for an acting category at the Oscars (her maternal grandfather Ricardo Domasin was half-Filipino), a fact that was given media attention in the Philippines at the time. She is part of a small group of nine Oscar nominees who are of Filipino descent. Here are the rest...

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Doc Corner: 'A Thousand Cuts'

By Glenn Dunks

The first word that came out of my mouth at the conclusion of A Thousand Cuts was simply, ‘Phwoar!’ Which is surprising because I don’t think it’s a word I use on the regular. But this new film by renowned Filipino-American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz had the dizzying, alarming sensation of being put through the wringer. It’s an ever shrinking and claustrophobic box of political corruption and democratic destruction that is so confident in itself that it leaves arguably it’s biggest and most damning moment to the end credits.

Diaz’s film predominantly follows Maria Ressa, a prominent journalist in the Philippines who in 2018 was co-named Time magazine’s Person of the Year and who has become a significent recipient of scorn from the nation’s bullish President, Rodrigo Duterte. Through her website Rappler, she has sought to uncover the violent criminality of his regime, but through public rallies, abusive televised press conferences and through packs of angry political surrogates and supporters, she has become Duterte’s public enemy number one. They have sought to silence her and leverage his power to have her arrested multiple times and spread fake, damaging information and threats to her and her outlet.

Sound familiar?

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