Oscars go global: Most international best picture lineup in history

In 2019, the director of the Korean movie “Parasite” jokingly called the Oscars a “very local” competition. 

The Academy Awards, which had their inaugural ceremony in 1929, were originally intended as a vehicle to promote American studio pictures. There wasn’t even a category for international movies until 1957. The Oscars were to movies what the World Series is to baseball. Movies from overseas were mainly segregated in the best foreign language category. Only a handful were nominated for the grand prize: best picture. In recent years, there’s been a shift. 

Ever since Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” won best picture in 2020, non-American movies have become competitive across major categories at the Oscars. This year’s nominees, announced this morning, include France’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest,” which is in German, each with five nominations. Both are finalists in the best picture category. It was the first time two international films have been nominated for best picture, according to the academy. Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” which is in Korean and English, also scored a nomination, making it the most international lineup in Oscar history.

“There are more people in the academy who don’t define ‘movie’ as a Hollywood product,” says Michael Schulman, author of “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears.” “They have no investment in Hollywood as the center of the film industry.”

Janet Yang, the first Asian American president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, kicked off the televised announcements by describing the organization as “the home of global cinema.” She boasted that, this year, ballots were cast from 93 countries.

This year, every nominee for best documentary feature was international, which was another first.

“After the #OscarsSoWhite scandal, the academy made this big push to expand its membership and diversify who was voting for the Oscars,” says Mr. Schulman, a staff writer at The New Yorker. “And most of the attention went to the fact that they were bringing in younger people, more people of color, and more women. But one of the underappreciated effects was that the academy voting body got a lot more international. And I think you see the effect of that in a win like ‘Parasite,’ which was the first foreign language film to win best picture. I don’t think that would have happened in the old academy.”

That’s a big contrast with Hollywood’s golden age, which was tarnished by xenophobia. In the earliest years of motion pictures, foreign films dominated two-thirds of American screens. In 1922, U.S. studios formed a cartel in the form of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America. They waged war on so-called immoral fare. “Such claims fell disproportionately on foreign films,” historian Kerry Segrave wrote in his 2004 book “Foreign Films in America.”

In 1949, there was a furor when Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” – a British movie – won best picture. Widely admired films by Federico Fellini and François Truffaut sometimes garnered nominations in categories such as best screenplay and best director. In 1973, Ingmar Bergman finally landed a best picture nomination for his Swedish drama “Cries and Whispers.”

Starting in the mid-1990s, a handful of international films vied for the best picture statuette. Credit the marketing acumen of now-disgraced Miramax heads Harvey and Bob Weinstein. They garnered nominations for “The Postman” (“Il Postino”) and “Life Is Beautiful.” In 2011, their French hit “The Artist” won best picture. (It wasn’t eligible for nomination for best foreign language film because, well, it’s a silent movie.) 

Harvey Weinstein was, of course, convicted of rape and sexual assault, and his film company went out of business. Meanwhile, superhero offerings from Marvel and DC took over multiplexes, crowding out middlebrow fare once seen as irresistible to the academy. That’s opened the door for more non-English-language nominees. Often, it’s streaming services that have led the way. Netflix scored multiple nods for Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 “Roma,” a best picture nominee. Last year, a new German adaptation of “All Quiet on the Western Front” was nominated for both best picture and best international film. 

“The membership of the academy who are [in] Hollywood, who are in the industry, ... the movies that they generally are making are not the ones that they’re necessarily voting for,” says Pete Hammond, awards editor and columnist for Deadline Hollywood. “They’re voting for these things that come out from around the world, from these great filmmakers, and they’re finding these films that really, comparatively, don’t make much at the box office.”

Mainstream cinema chains are increasingly hosting non-English films. In part, it’s because Hollywood is producing fewer big screen movies, and so chains are looking for fare to fill multiplexes. But it also reflects audience demand. Moviegoers have been able to find the likes of “Anatomy of a Fall,” a marriage drama wrapped inside a murder mystery, at some Showcase Cinemas and AMCs. The Japanese release “Godzilla: Year One” – which garnered a nod for best visual effects – rampaged through multiplexes to rake in over $50 million in the United States.

And legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” nominated for best animated feature, has netted $23 million in the U.S. That’s a record for an original anime feature. And subtitles no longer are considered a deterrent at the multiplex.

“More people want to go to the original foreign language version rather than the English dubbed version,” says Mr. Hammond. “A lot of the box office for that came from the subtitled version.”

As a result of the increased acclaim for international films, the acting categories also feature more non-English-language performances. Sandra Hüller, who stars in both “The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” was nominated for best actress for the latter. Lily Gladstone is considered a favorite in that category to become the first Native American to win an Oscar for acting. She is one of several characters speaking Osage in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about the murderous exploitation of that tribe in Oklahoma.

The academy’s increasingly global outlook prompted it to rename the foreign language film category “international feature film.” Its diverse membership will continue to broaden the horizons of the big screen.

As Mr. Schulman puts it, “It’s going to continue to expand our perception of what a best picture is, what it looks like, what language it’s spoken in.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the number of Oscar nominations for “The Zone of Interest.”