Last year, many film lovers were outraged that the Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In didn’t score an Academy Award nomination for “Best Foreign Language Film.” However, Oscar voters were not to blame. Instead, the Swedish Film Institute failed to select the movie as the country’s official submission, effectively eliminating it from consideration.
This Oscar category is therefore a misnomer, a false superlative. It implies that voters actually get to nominate the five greatest foreign films that they have seen throughout the year. However, this is simply not true, as the Academy has a clunky system in place that doesn’t give priority to art. For this award, nations around the world submit one film to the Academy as their official entries. Voters are then limited to this selection when making their final choices, and all other foreign films are ineligible.
This process raises pointed questions. First, what if the two (or more) best foreign films come from the same country? For example, Sweden chose Everlasting Moments over Let the Right One In, but many critics listed both as among the year’s best. It was undoubtedly hard for Sweden to choose one over the other, but they shouldn’t have had to make that choice in the beginning.
Secondly, the system raises questions of censorship. An Oscar nomination is a moment of great pride for countries, and obviously they want to back a film they can be proud of. But what if a great film is made that doesn’t portray its homeland favorably? It’s unlikely that a government would select it to represent the entire country abroad.
The Academy argues that time constraints make this process necessary. Yet, for an organization that claims to champion cinematic art, this is clearly unacceptable. The Secret in Their Eyes may have won the Oscar last week, but we must take the award with a grain of salt.
