Oscar Omissions Provoke Outcry, In Any Language
Panel Chairman Rethinking How Foreign Films Are Nominated

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 19, 2008

When nominations for the 80th annual Academy Awards are announced Tuesday, the usual grousing about who made the cut and who was left out will begin. But that ritual started a week early this year, when the committee that nominates candidates for Best Foreign Language Film released its shortlist on Tuesday.

The outcry was so forceful and so immediate that the committee's chairman has vowed to change the Academy's nominating procedures for this perennially problematic category. Enduring arguments -- that the retired Academy members who tend to serve on the committee habitually shut out the most vibrant and edgy examples of world cinema -- are being revived. Even the notion of the Best Foreign Language Film category itself has come under fire as obsolete in an increasingly cosmopolitan and porous global film culture.

The nine selected films, five of which will be nominated as finalists for the Oscar, weren't in themselves controversial; many of them are by established and even revered directors in the global filmmaking community, among them Denys Arcand, Giuseppe Tornatore, Sergei Bodrov, Andrzej Wajda and Nikita Mikhalkov.

Among the shortlisted films are "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," by the Brazilian director Cao Hamburger, and "Beaufort," by Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar, both of which were enthusiastically received at the 2007 Washington Jewish Film Festival last fall.

But two of the most highly regarded foreign films of 2007 conspicuously did not make the cut: the Romanian film "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, as well as several other critics' and festival prizes, and "Persepolis," an animated film from France by the Iranian graphic artist Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud that won its own share of laurels and landed on several critics' year-end top 10 lists.

The absence of those two titles -- as well as ones from such vibrant film cultures as Mexico ("Silent Light") and Korea ("Secret Sunshine") -- stirred up immediate ire in film circles, mostly expressed in the blogosphere that covers Hollywood. "How Do You Say 'Oscar Scandal' in Romanian?" read the headline on LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas's Foundas & Taylor on Film blog the day the shortlist was announced. Foundas called the omission of "4 Months," by writer-director Cristian Mungiu, "as embarrassing a blunder as any in the Academy's history."

Todd Hitchcock, who programs films at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, said he reacted to the announcement with "disbelief." Noting that a clear consensus had been built throughout last year regarding the artistic merits of both "4 Months" and "Persepolis" -- which earned 20 awards between them -- he called the controversy "not just a few critics carping about how they know better. This is shocking across the board." (Both films played to sold-out audiences at AFI's European Union Showcase last November.)

Reached by phone on Thursday, Mark Johnson, chairman of the nominating committee for the foreign-language film Oscar, was clearly upset, although he took pains to make clear he didn't take issue with the nine films that were selected. "The outcome is noteworthy not for what made it -- it's not like some ridiculous movies made it onto a list they shouldn't be on -- it's what didn't make it." Citing "4 Months" and "Persepolis" by name, Johnson said, "It's just inconceivable to me that they weren't included."

The exclusions are especially distressing to Johnson in light of recent reforms he made to the nominating process. Along with documentaries, foreign-language films aren't nominated by people in their own "craft" categories (such as directors, cinematographers and actors), but by members of the Academy at large -- who commit to watching around 14 or 15 movies over two months.

Because the process is a significant time commitment (foreign-language committee members can't watch the films on DVD, only at Academy-sanctioned screenings), the demographics of the committee have skewed toward people with time on their hands -- in other words, retirees. The result, many observers say, are films that are safe, conventional and relatively mainstream, both in form and content.

To rectify that, Johnson last year instituted a process by which members of the committee, which numbers around 400, would come up with a shortlist of nine films. Then a smaller group, composed of 10 randomly selected committee members as well as 30 specially invited, more professionally active members (10 in New York and 20 in Los Angeles), would winnow those down to the five nominees.

"Last year was the first year" of trying that process, Johnson said, "and it worked very well. I was really happy with it." Among the nominees selected last year were Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," the Algerian film "Days of Glory," Denmark's "After the Wedding" and the Canadian film "Water." The Oscar winner was the German Cold War drama "The Lives of Others."

What went wrong this year? Observers suggest that "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," with its stark neorealist design, real-time pacing and graphic depiction of a late-term abortion (including a shot of a fetus on a bathroom floor), turned committee members off. "Persepolis," an animated film with a bold, black-and-white look, might have been dismissed by some as "only" a cartoon.

Whatever the reasons, Johnson avers, the process is clearly in need of tinkering. He intends to approach the Academy's Board of Governors, which oversees rule changes, soon after the awards ceremony on Feb. 24. "I think we have to do some kind of radical change and hopefully we can come up with a system that works better," Johnson said.

The shortlist wasn't the first source of controversy for the committee, which has long been accused of having arbitrary rules. For one thing, foreign-language films aren't submitted for Oscar consideration by their filmmakers or studios but by countries, opening up the submission process to accusations of politics and cronyism. "Each country does it differently," said Picturehouse President Bob Berney, a longtime critic of the nomination process. (Picturehouse's film "Mongol" has been shortlisted for the foreign-language film Oscar, whereas "La Vie en Rose," which the studio also distributed, was overlooked by France in favor of "Persepolis.")

"In France there are only six or eight people on the [submission] committee, whereas in Spain, 1,000 people vote," Berney said, "which only adds to the ambiguous nature of this process. And the fact that a country can nominate only one is very tough."

Johnson said that the rules are revisited on a regular basis: "We've asked, should we have a wild-card entry, where we take the winner of, say, four or five of the most important film festivals? We've talked about things like that, and it's ongoing. I just think right now, for me, the bigger problem is the one we've been talking about."

Rules and regulations aside, at a time when cinema seems to be becoming only more globalized, the notion of ghettoizing films into a foreign-language category is seen by many as problematic. Last October "The Band's Visit," a highly regarded Israeli film, was disqualified from competing because more than half its dialogue is in English -- ironically, because that's the only language its Egyptian and Israeli characters can communicate in. Tom Vick, film programmer at the Freer and Sackler galleries, notes that "Mongol," which was submitted by Kazakhstan, was made by a Russian director (Bodrov), stars a Japanese actor and features Chinese and Mongolian supporting actors.

"It's clear these distinctions about what constitutes a foreign film are starting to break down," said Vick, adding that "the idea that you have these borders separating movies" might be one whose time has passed.

Johnson agrees, to a point. "It's very hard in today's world to assign a country to a film or a film to a country," he said, citing last year's "Lust, Caution" and 2004's "The Motorcycle Diaries" as two that fell through the cracks. "In a perfect world, this category wouldn't exist. But I can still defend it, and my biggest defense is that foreign-language films are an endangered species in America." The foreign-language Oscar race, he said, serves as a reminder "that there are people around the world who are making films as good as anything we make here and sometimes much better."