Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film - Criticisms and Controversies

Criticisms and Controversies

Because each country chooses its official submission according to its own rules, the decisions of the nominating bodies in each respective country are sometimes mired in controversy: for instance, the Indian selection committee (Film Federation of India) was recently accused of bias by Bhavna Talwar, the director of Dharm (2007), who claimed her film was rejected in favor of Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007) because of the personal connections of the latter film's director and producer.

Another object of controversy is the Academy's "one-country-one-film" rule, which has been criticized by filmmakers. Although it allows films from small countries like Iceland or Bosnia and Herzegovina to get recognized by the Academy by putting them on an equal footing with major releases from established filmmaking nations, it also forces countries to exclude many motion pictures because they are forced to select only one film. For the submissions for the 75th Academy Awards, for instance, critically acclaimed films such as Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her were not eligible simply because Spain had to choose only one film to submit and opted instead for Mondays in the Sun (2002).

Moreover, the need for a film to be actually submitted by a specific country hinders the chances of international co-productions of getting nominated. For example, a multinational film such as The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) whose production involved nine different countries could not be specifically affiliated with any one of them. Therefore the film ended up being excluded from the race for the Foreign Language Film Award, even though it was successful and received numerous other awards, including an Academy Award for Best Original Song, an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.

In recent years, the Academy's very definition of the term "country" itself has been polemical. The submissions for the 75th Academy Awards, for instance, became shrouded in controversy when it was reported that Humbert Balsan, producer of the critically acclaimed Palestinian film Divine Intervention (2002), tried to submit his picture to the Academy but was told it could not run for the Foreign Language Film Award since the State of Palestine is not recognized by the Academy in its rules. Because the Academy had previously accepted films from other political entities such as Hong Kong, the rejection of Divine Intervention triggered accusations of double standard from pro-Palestinian activists. Three years later, however, another Palestinian-Arab film, Paradise Now (2005), succeeded in getting nominated for the Foreign Language Film Award. The nomination also caused protests, this time from pro-Israeli groups in the United States, who objected to the Academy's use of the name "Palestine" on its official website to designate the film's submitting country. After intense lobbying from Jewish groups, the Academy decided to designate Paradise Now as a submission from the Palestinian Authority, a move that was decried by the film's director Hany Abu-Assad. During the awards ceremony, the film was eventually announced by presenter Will Smith as a submission from the Palestinian Territories.