Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film - Submission and Nomination Process

Submission and Nomination Process

Every country is invited to submit what it considers its best film to the Academy. The designation of each country's official submission has to be done by an organization, jury or committee composed of people from the film industry, whose members' names must be sent to the Academy. Only one film is accepted from each country.

After each country has designated its official entry, English-subtitled copies of all submitted films are shipped to the Academy, where they are screened by the Foreign Language Film Award Committee(s), whose members select by secret ballot the five official nominations. Final voting for the winner is restricted to active and life Academy members who have attended exhibitions of all five nominated films. Members who have watched the Foreign Language Film entries only on videocassette or DVD are ineligible to vote. These procedures were slightly modified for the 2006 (79th) Academy Awards, with the Academy deciding to institute a two-stage process in determining the nominees: for the first time in the history of the award, a nine-film shortlist was published one week before the official nominations announcement. In the meantime, a smaller thirty-member committee which included ten New York-based Academy members was formed, and spent three days viewing the shortlisted films before choosing the five official nominees. Residents of the city hosting the country's second largest film industry were thus allowed to participate for the first time ever in the selection process for the Foreign Language Film Award nominees.