| OSCAR STATS & FUN TRIVIA ABOUT THIS CATEGORY | ||||
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Most wins for a foreign film
FOUR WAY TIE Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Taiwan 2000), Fanny & Alexander's (Sweden 1983), and All Quiet... (2022) share the record with 4 wins (Foreign Film plus crafts). Parasite (South Korea, 2019) tied that number but in 'bigger' categories: Picture, Director, Screenplay, and International |
Most nominations for a foreign film Roma went on to three wins and Crouching four but Emilia Perez didn't win its category! |
Most competitive wins in the category by director |
Most competitive wins and most competitive nominations w/out winning International Feature Most Wins While Losing: Mexico's Pan's Labyrinth (2006) won 3 awards from 6 nominations but lost its own category to Germany's The Lives of Others. Most Noms While Losing: Emilia Perez proved to be a flash-in-the-pan obsession peaking on nomination morning with 13 (gulp) honors. It won only two statues and lost its category to Brazil's worthier player I'm Still Here. |
Most nominated country France leads with 43 nominees (they were also given 3 honoraries before nominations began proper in 1956). Their most recent win was 33 years ago with Indochine (1992) starring Catherine Deneuve. Their drought continues... |
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Most winning country of all time ITALY leads with 14 wins (3 of which were honoraries). Some of the most famous films among their winners are The Bicycle Thief (1949), 8 1/2 (1963), The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971), Cinema Paradiso (1989), and Life is Beautiful (1998). Italy has struggled since the 21st century began, though, with only 1 win (The Great Beauty, 2013)
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Most popular country with Oscar since 2000 That would be GERMANY. In the 21st century (i.e. the past 25 years) Germany has been nominated 11 times and won 3 times. And if that weren't enough they made the finals in another 5 times. In short they've been competitive in 64% of this century's Oscar races. More details on last row of this chart |
First foreign language film nominated for Best Picture Grand Illusion (1938). But Oscar didn't start giving statues to foreign films until 11 years later and foreign films didn't get their own competitive category until 1956 |
Most influential snub of the past two decades You have the horror of the snubbing of Romania's Palme d'or winner 4 Weeks, 3 Months and 2 Days (2007) to thank for the creation of the Academy's Executive Committee. Nominations immediately improved after this committee process began. That process is done but the shift in the focus of the race to critical darlings persists. |
First foreign language film to win an acting Oscar Italy's Two Women (1961) won Best Actress for Sophia Loren who was, not unimportantly, already a major star in the US. But Italy did not submit her vehicle for Foreign Film, choosing Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte instead (which was not nominatd) |
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First country to break through Oscar's midcentury France/Italy/Japan obsession For the first 12 years of foreign-language film honors only France, Italy, or Japan ever won. Sweden was the first country to break up that strangehold with back to back Ingmar Bergman wins for The Virgin Spring (1960) and Through a Glass Darkly (1961) |
First foreign language film to win any Oscar Switzerland's Marie-Louise (1944) won Best Screenplay, years before the Best International Feature Film category began. |
First foreign language film winner to win more than one Oscar Japan's Gate of Hell (1954) won the Honorary for Foreign Film and also took home Costume Design. |
Only directors of foreign film nominees to go on to direct a Best Picture winner Czech director Milos Forman for Loves of a Blonde (1965)/ Fireman's Ball (1967) + One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)/ Amadeus (1984) was the first to do it. Two Mexican filmmakers have followed suit: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Amores Perros (2000)/Biutiful (2010) + Birdman (2014) and Guillermo del Toro for Pan's Labyrinth (2006) + Shape of Water (2017) Only Bong Joon-ho has done both simultaneously (with Parasite, 2019) |
Only Best International Film winners to also win Best Director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite for South Korea) and Alfonso Cuarón (Roma for Mexico) are the only directors to accomplish this feat and both were very recent. It's worth noting that Ang Lee (Taiwan) has won the Best Director category twice but curiously neither of those wins was connected to either a Best Picture Winner OR a Best International Film winner. Very interesting stat for Mr. Ang Lee there, showing how often he's delivered in a major way. |
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Most Overall Nominations for a Best Foreign Language Film Nominee That Didn't Win Anything (Not Even This Category) This is a three-way tie. The most recent is the French comedy Amélie (2000) which scored 5 nominations but suffered a surprise loss to Bosnia in the foreign category. |
Biggest Comeback / Revenge for a Film that Was Snubbed In This Category This answer is subjective (how to define comeback or revenge?) but the answer is probably Brazil's City of God which failed to receive a nomination in 2022 when submitted. In 2023 after its US release it scored 4 shocking nominations including Best Director. Truly no pundits or media types saw that coming that year. Other snubees that got sweet revenge after their snub? Germany's Run Lola Run (1998/1999) became an influential art house sensation. Films like Sweden's Persona (1966) and Hong Kong's In the Mood for Love (2000/2001) now regularly make lists of the greatest films of all time. |
Directors with Most Success In This Category Though *Technically* the Country Wins special cases 4 noms / 4 wins 4 noms / no wins 3 noms / 3 wins 3 noms / no wins |
Stars Who've Appeared in Most Best International Feature Film Nominees
in 3 nominated films Way too many actors have appeared in two nominated films to list but some still working include: Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas, Toni Servillo, Daniel Bruhl, Benno Furman, Renate Reinsve, and Sebastian Koch |
Only Best International Film Nominees to Also Compete in Best Picture Z (1969) Nominated for Best Picture but NOT Submitted for International by Their Country Cries and Whispers (1972) Nominated for Best Picture Before International Feature Existed as a Category Grand Illusion (1938) |
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Most Popular Countries w/ Oscar 1. FRANCE 9. POLAND 10. CZECHOSLOVAKIA* 11 [tie] ISRAEL & YUGOSLAVIA* * country no longer exists, having split into multiple countries |
Most Popular Countries w/ Oscar ▲ 1. GERMANY ▲ 5. JAPAN 8. ▲ SPAIN 9. ITALY 11. SWEDEN 12 ▲ NORWAY countries just outside this list: Austria, Iran, Israel, Russia, Belgium, |
Most Popular Countries with Oscar 1. FRANCE 2. ITALY 3. GERMANY 4. SPAIN 5. SWEDEN 6. DENMARK 7. JAPAN 8. POLAND 9. HUNGARY 10. ISRAEL 11. SOVIET UNION* runners up: Mexico, Argentina, Belgium, Russia, Norway * country no longer exists, having split into multiple countries |
"NEVER GIVE UP"
03. BULGARIA (36 submissions | 1 finalist) 04. PHILIPPINES (35 submissions... + 1 submission before it was an official category) 05. VENEZUELA (34 submissions | 1 finalist) 06. CROATIA (35 submissions) 07. [tie] TURKEY & THAILAND (32 submissions | 1 finalist) 09 [tie] SLOVAKIA & SLOVENIA (28 submissions Slovakia / 29 submissions Slovenia) 11 INDONESIA 12 URUGUAY (25 submissions | 1 disqualified nom) runners up: |
Longest Consecutive Nomination Streaks 6 YEARS 5 YEARS 4 YEARS 3 YEARS Mexico Brazil could enter this club in a year's time for the first time -- we shall see... |
Index | Picture | Actress | Actor | Supp Actor | Supp Actress | Director
Screenplays | Visuals | Music and Sound | Animation & Docs | International Film
Index | Picture | Actress | Actor | Supp Actor | Supp Actress | Director
Screenplays | Visuals | Music and Sound | Animation & Docs | International Film