Oscars Outsider - The Oscar Category Where Countries Regularly Commit Fraud (A Brief History)

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

The Best International Feature Film Oscar is the most chaotic, politically charged, and scandal-ridden category in Academy history — and Dylan, Craig, and Sean are here to prove it.In this episode: a full history of the award from its 1948 origins to today, including the infamous 1993 Uruguay scandal (a disqualified film, a federal lawsuit, and a French co-production sitting on the same ballot), the 1967 race where The Battle of Algiers won the Golden Lion while French critics boycotted its Venice premiere and stormed out of the auditorium, and the Michael Haneke Caché controversy that rewrote the language rules forever.Plus: how the Anatomy of a Fall debacle directly caused a sweeping new AMPAS rule — and what it means for the 2025 race. Early country submissions are in: Romania is claiming the Palme d'Or winner Fjord, Japan grabbed the Hamaguchi film All of a Sudden, South Korea went with Possible Love over Hope. And the hosts react to mid-Venice buzz on Wild Horse Nine, Robert Pattinson in Prime Time, and Nathan Fielder's surprise Elizabeth Holmes documentary from Telluride.Films discussed: The Battle of Algiers, A Man and a Woman, Fjord, All of a Sudden, Possible Love, Wild Horse Nine, Anatomy of a Fall, Caché, Paradise Now, La Strada, A Place in the World, Close to Eden, Loves of a Blond, and more.Chapters:0:00 Venice & Telluride news13:58 History of Best International Film28:36 The 1993 Uruguay disqualification scandal42:15 The 1967 race: Battle of Algiers vs. A Man and a Woman1:09:28 New AMPAS rule & 2025 race submissions

We are talking, of course, tonight about the Oscar for the best international feature film. The most messy, weird, awkward, chaotic and politically charged of the Oscars. It's past, its future. It's present. Welcome to Oscars Outsider, a podcast about the awards race and the world, the globe. That is tonight's subject. That strange blue marble pinned to an endless place. That's some call Earth, Tara, or simply home.

So let's get into it. We're the outsiders. I am Dylan. That is Craig in the Salties hat. If you're watching this on video, I don't know what that is. How you doing, Craig? I'm doing good. Reping Salty's Winnipeg Beach.

Yes, I love that Winnipeg beef. So we're also joined by friend of the pod, our frequent collaborator. And good buddy. Sean O'Rourke. Yeah, just rolling through. Thanks for having me. All right. Rollin.

I wish I was quicker on the roll and drop, but you can add it in post. God damn it. The San Board is back. Oh, no. Sean, he just does it when you're on, I think. I don't know what. All right. I like to feel special.

So we are, as I said, going to dive into the best international feature film category of the Oscars, which I love. It is such a weird and messy one. I'm going to do a history of the category. and we have each selected one year from Oscars history that we are going to highlight presenting some fun facts about that. And of course, we are going to transition to what's happening in this year's Oscars race, because the race for Best International Film could be really shaken up by some important rule changes that have been made recently. But we'll get into all of that soon.

We like to start off with a new segment. And tonight, the new segment is going to kind of seamlessly integrate, I think, into our feature section. because we are in the middle of festival season right now or the start middle, whatever you want. Venice is underway. We are about halfway through the Venice Film Festival as we record this on the night of Monday, September 7th. Our last episode was a preview of Venice,

and now we've seen a lot of the movies come out. We've had a lot of the reactions. Craig, what has surprised you? Well, so it's not just Venice that is on right now. Tell You Read is also on. And that's not something that we actually previewed in our last episode. Because you can't really preview it because they announced the films as it opens.

They don't give you the lineup in advance. Yeah, exactly. But in the lead-up, and I'm not sure maybe we talked about this, maybe we didn't, but there was all this kind of buzz about the festival season having one extra film coming out of A-24 that had potential to shake things up or was going to get people excited. And no one kind of knew what it was, but there was a secret premiere for it. at Tell You Read last night and at the same time they dropped the teaser for it. Did you see this?

Yeah. So you're of course referring to the Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim. Yeah, you know it. Elizabeth Holmes movie. So a big year for Lance Oppenheim, who is premiering currently at Venice, just premiered his first narrative film, which is primetime with Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, one that I'm very excited about. And now we find out that he's been collaborating with Nathan Fielder on this

Elizabeth Holmes movie. I don't know how much this concerns like the actual awards race, but it's definitely a fun thing. It's definitely fun to have this hyped surprise greeting and oh, look what it is. It's Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes. It's my boy. You know I am like such a huge

Nathan Fielder fan. I'll take any chance to like to glaze him. And so I'm like so stoked about this in particular. The The teaser is great. Like, I think it's fantastic. And this is something that within the, you know, the subredits around the rehearsal and Nathan

for you and anything like Nathan Fielder adjacent, it was known that he had met with her in prison at some point. And, but no one kind of had the details about what this project actually entailed. And come, come to find out that he actually spent like the preceding, 34 days prior to her reporting to prison with her capturing every move along with like Lance Oppenheim. And I'm, I'm seated for it. I am like so excited about this. And maybe spoiler alert about what some of the dialogue is. This is probably no surprise to anyone that has kind of followed Nathan Fielder's work.

But there's some sort of blend between fact and fiction and playing with the narrative. device. Allegedly, Amanda Safreed is reprising her role as Elizabeth Holmes for reenactments in this. And so presumably there is some sort of focus on either media or the lens itself, as tends to be the case with Nathan Field. All right. So since we're on Telluride, might as well say that, I guess in terms of the Oscars race, the big title that we found out is premiering at Telly Right is the debut, which you've talked about before in the show. We're also going to see the premiere of Elsinor, which has an Andrew Scott performance

that is apparently very hyped. And Mike Lee's probably final film, Tender Loving Care, which is, it's always nice to have a new Mike Lee movie out there. I do kind of want to pivot back to Venice unless there's other things about Telluride that you think that we should speak on before we change continents.

No, yeah. Let's get back over these. I have a question about the Elizabeth Holmes Nathan Fielder. Is there footage of the actual, did you get footage with Elizabeth Holmes or just spend the time with her and the acting? The teaser, go go watch the teaser because it's, it's great.

It's just like maybe a sexual chemistry. Yeah. Is she doing the voice? She's doing some. She changed her voice. No, she's doing a different voice. She totally changed. A new voice?

Yeah, she's got a higher pitched voice now. It's totally different. And he seems to have like some sort of voice that is a little bit atypical from his usual. presentation. But yeah, I do think that that one is interesting because it seems like it's going to be classified as a documentary, which I don't think there's been any documentaries that I've ever been within the Best Picture conversation, not to say that this is going to be within that conversation, but earlier reviews are very, like, promising for it. And also... I don't think that would be in the rules. I don't think you can have a documentary in Best Picture.

I think it has to be narrative. I don't know. Well, I... I, think that it is possible. I don't think that the rules exclude that. You can have animated because there's been one animated film that has been nominated. Best picture, there's been three or four, I think. Anyway, but yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there's never been an actual documentary nominated for Best Richard. Maybe I just assumed that like the rule say it's narrative film, but maybe there is no such rule that actually says that. Yeah, in terms of like awards, race, impact, I think the only thing that's been clear that I've heard is that, Amanda Saferead's performance in it would not be SAG eligible as a result of it being documentary.

All right. So have you been following the premieres over in Italy? Has that been on your radar as well? We talked about a lot of these movies last week. Many of the titles that we've talked about have now had their premiere screenings. We do have reactions out. We do have people getting out the chronometers and timing how long with standing ovation was. which is my favorite bit.

I love it. Anything from that stand out to you? So Wild Horse 9 has come out to relatively strong reviews. I feel like... Deadlines got them at 14 minutes on the standing. Oh, that's the best of the fest so far. Yeah, and John Malkovich was in tears over it, and then immediately came out and said something like pro-Israel.

And so is now everyone is up in arms against him. That seems like it has. maybe the strongest reception that I've seen at Venice this year so far. But it doesn't seem like it's overwhelming. Like this is for sure a lock. So I feel like this might tilt it a bit lower on people's predictions than it was going. So what do you think? I think it seems like a very strong debut.

It seems to have very strong reviews. It has the biggest stand to go so far. It is kind of as we discussed last week. The only movie premiering at Venice that has kind of obvious Oscar appeal, there could be others that sneak into the race. But that's the one that everybody's been kind of picking a Martin McDone, a movie as something that's going to be in best picture contention. And so far, I don't think that that view that that is the one best picture nominee

that's coming out of Venice has been challenged, though there are still are other films that are going to be to be premiering. This was, of course, a year where Hollywood didn't really show up too much at Venice. and that might be part of an industry-wide trend where people don't want to get embarrassed at Venice as has happened with say Joker 2 in the past where the big premieres just ended up in everybody making fun in the movie

or don't worry darling was another example of that. It could be just the timing thing. There was an interview with Alberto Barbera who is the director of the Venice Film Festival where somebody asked him like, oh, you can't just say it's a timing thing. Like there are just new movies coming out from Alejandro Gonzalez and Yari to David Fincher, Aaron Sorkin, Ridley Scott.

How come none of those movies are here? And Barbara said, and I love this. He was like, well, the thing is, Digger is the only one that actually declined to show up. The Fincher and the Sorkin weren't ready yet because they started doing reshoots. And the Ridley Scott movie, it's in theaters right now. So you can see for yourself, it's just bad. But, yeah, in terms of other like, premieres. The movies that we kind of

expected would have good premieres. Possible love. The Li Chang Dong movie from Korea is getting a good reaction. It opened with Inc. The Danny Boyle movie about Ruper Murdoch's Rise. That's been getting good reactions. Prime time. People are really stoked about Robert Pattinson's performance,

which might put him into the best actor conversation. I think it was deadline that referred to his performance as like a combination of Jerry McGuire and Count Dracula. Yeah. I can't picture that, but it sounds awesome. Yeah.

But I think my favorite moment from the premiere was I spoke last episode about how I thought Woman Unknown, the new movie from a Danish Egyptian filmmaker, May Altuki, could be kind of like a sleeper contender for the Golden Line. And it had a really dramatic premiere that report sounds really cool. Apparently the subtitles got out of sync with the movie. and then after they played out of sync for a while, May al-Tuki, the director, stood up, went into the projection booth.

A loud voices were heard from the projection booth. The film was rewound and then restarted from the point where the subtitles went out of sync. Landed a seven and a half minute standing O, according to IndyWare. So that was a kind of a fun moment for a filmmaker who is kind of seizing the spotlight here, I think, not a super well-known filmmaker. But the fact that there's a lot of controversy about her film being the only film directed by a woman in competition,

one and a half films are directed by a woman because Naza has a co-director who's a woman, a racial soul. But there's been a lot of criticism of the festival for only having one woman directed film. So that, of course, has meant a lot of reporters gathering around that one woman director who happens to be her. So she's been getting a lot of spotlight here. The fact that she did that at her own screening just really puts a lot more of the focus on her. So I think that's maybe a good sign for a woman on knowing getting more press, maybe getting ahead of the conversation for the Golden Lion. We'll see.

I don't know. Do you know who's got distribution for that? I don't. No. I could probably do a little quick Googling if you're willing to edit it out if it goes too long. Yeah. international sales are handled by trust Nordisk. So that sounds to me like it doesn't have an American distributor yet.

I don't think it has an American distributor yet. Currently seeking an American distributor according to Indy Wire. So this is a moment for the movie to make a big splash and get a distributor who might get some more eyeballs on it. Yeah, it will be interesting to see who goes in for this for distribution for like awards purposes at least because it feels like at least neon A24. those houses are pretty full with their slates. So, yeah, I'm curious to see what happens with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I'm really excited to get to our feature tonight,

but do you have any other more news before we, before I move on? No, I don't think so. I think we can dive in. All right. Sean, any thoughts on the Venice Film Festival before we move on to our feature today? Absolutely none. No. Awesome.

All right. So I said that we're going to be done. talking about the Oscar for Best International Film, formerly called the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. They changed the name in 2020. I feel like the old name describes the category better, since the main criteria is it being in a film, not in English. But anyways, the history of the award starts not with the original Oscars. It came out about a bit later. So the body that hands out the Oscars is called the AMPA-A-A-S, but none of those three A's stands for America.

It has never been in the constitution, if you will, of the Academy that they are the American film body, but they were of course conceived as such as the as a sort of, as a body by and for Hollywood and Hollywood workers. The international film community, such as it was, was probably not something that was really on the minds of the people who founded the Academy back in 1927. while silent film did bloom in various countries at once. After World War I, the film production scene in California was far and away the biggest what in the world.

And I think by the time that we get to the first Oscars being handed on 1929, people in Hollywood are thinking of other nations' film industries to the extent that they are thinking about them at all as kind of like minor league teams that you can maybe kind of pick some talent out of, but otherwise don't pay too much attention to. But it wasn't too long before some non-Hollywood movies did start getting nominated for Oscars. René Clare's Anu La Liberte was nominated for Art Direction at the third ceremony in 1932. So that's the first time a Hollywood movie snuck in. And at the 11th Oscars in 1939, we had a best picture winner from outside of a best Picture nominee, sorry, from outside of Hollywood for the first time, Jean Renoir's Grand

Delusion was nominated for Best Picture on 39, a very politically charged movie when we did the history of the Venice Film Festival last week. I talked about how that movie getting shut down for the Golden Line, even though the jury wanted it because they were overruled by Mussolini was a big flashpoint that ended up with the creation of the Khan Film Festival as like a non-fascist alternative to the Venice Film Festival. And it remained a very like politically charged movie Grand Delusion did throughout the Second World War. Gerbils ordered all prints of the movie to be burned, etc. So it's a Mussolini Gable was coming to him though.

Yeah. Yeah, eventually. Specifically because of that. Yeah. The only bad thing he did. Yeah. specifically because of that. So during the World War II years,

we don't see this repeating. We don't see foreign films returning to Best Picture, or really any categories, even though the Oscars are exploding in World War II. Hollywood is doing great during World War II. Lots of classic movies are coming out. The Oscars are getting super popular, but it's all Hollywood films.

Not super surprising because most European countries' film industries either kind of shut down during World War II or they are being co-opted by the state to make propaganda movies like was the case in Germany or in any event there wasn't really film exportation during that period. But as soon as the war ended, European filmmaking revved back up really fast and so did film exportation. So very quickly these European films started to find their ways back into American cinemas and started to finding their ways back into Academy Awards, in 1947, two of the screenplay nominees were for European movies, Children of Paradise, which has a screenplay by famous French poet Jacques Pryver and

Roberto Rossolides's Rome Open City also had a screenplay nomination that same year, screenplayed by Sergio Amade and Federico Felidi, a name that the Academy would soon be very familiar with. So with this growing exposure of non-American films, the Academy kind of realized they needed a plan of action for how they're going to handle this. Because on the one hand, this was kind of, this is a Hollywood promotional committee. So they don't really want slots of precious nominations to be taken over by non-Hollywood films. Some people could feel threatened by that. There just aren't enough nominations available for Hollywood if these like French movies and

Italian movies are starting to clutter the academy. On the other hand, if they had specified, this is only for American movies, that would kind of reduce the prestige of the Oscars because it wouldn't be the world's biggest film awards show anymore. So this strategy was spearheaded by the president of the Academy during the post-war years, who was Gene Herschelt, a man who was born in Denmark, a Danish American, who was a Hollywood actor. and he advocated for a new strategy for kind of towing this line. He said very diplomatically that an international award, if properly and carefully administered, would promote a closer relationship between American film craftsmen and those in other countries. So on his directions, starting with the 1948 edition, the 20th Academy Awards. A special non-competitive trophy would be handed out to a foreign film.

deemed to be of exceptional merit. The first one was given to Vittorio De Sica's early neorealist films Shoeshine, and this non-competitive special trophy was handed out eight times between 48 and 56, and three countries clearly dominated early on. Six of the winners were either films from France or Italy, with two going to De Sica films and two going to René Clement films, and the other two went to films from Japan. Rashomon and Miamilto Mishashi.

So for the 29th Academy Awards held in 1957 for the films of 56, they made the decision to upgrade this special foreign film trophy to a full-on competitive category like the other competitive categories with a field of nomination. And this presented the problem that would haunt the category throughout its history, provoking a lot of controversies and resentments and rule changes, which is how do you narrow down all of the films released in the world to an accessible selection that the Academy can then choose from. So in Herschel's spirit of using the award to promote collaboration between Hollywood and other film industries, they settled on the idea that basically, well, look,

pretty much every country on Earth has some kind of film board, film council, film committee that oversees national film production. So we'll just like basically send out invites to all and say every year you are invited to submit one film that was made in your country for consideration for a nomination for this Academy Awards. And that's basically how they have handled it ever since. There have been a number of rule tweaks along the way, including a very new one this year, which we'll get too soon. They made it a two-part committee when they started getting too many nominations.

In the early, like, you know, 10 years or so, they could expect maybe 12, 15 countries to submit a film. Now, maybe 90 countries will submit a film. So they have like a two-part system where one committee creates a short list, then another committee will pick from the short list to make the nominations. So starting in 1957, that was the first year, a competitive award for what they were now calling Best Foreign Language Film was handed out. And that went to Italy for Felini's La Strata, beating out. competitors from France and Japan, as you would expect, but also West Germany and Denmark. And Felidi repeated the next year for Knights of Kiberia, which was followed up by two winners representing France, Mononcle, and Black Orpheus.

Black Orpheus represents the first example of something that has become common in recent years, especially, a movie that's representing one country, despite being filmed somewhere else in a different language. The next year, 1961, finally saw a country other than France, Italy, or Japan a breakthrough when Ingmar Bergman scored Sweden's first win for the Virgin Spring.

Like Falini before him, Bergman got repeat titles going back to back with Thruoglass Darkly in 62. Ladies and gentlemen. De Sika and Felitti are probably like the all-time goats of the category. They've each won four times.

Inkbar Bergman probably would have the crown, though, if he got some more help from his team. He got a third win for Fanny and Alexander in 84, where the movie was also nominated for Best Picture. But that was the first time. So here's the thing. Fannie and Alexander was the first time in

15 years that Sweden actually successfully submitted a Bergman film for the category. Sweden kept passing him over. I say successfully submitted because they did actually try to submit scenes from America. but it was overruled because it had aired on television before it was in theaters. But with that exception, they kept passing on Bergman films.

I don't know if that was a sign of the deteriorating relationship between Bergman and the Swedish state. People keep saying LeBron is cooked, but you can still play. They get tired of greatness, you know? Yeah, but the thing is, at a certain point, it's bad roster management. You got to let your stars be your stars, right? Autumn Sonata. You got to submit Autumn Sonata. I'm sorry. Yeah. Autumn Sonata had Oscar nominations in other categories.

so did cries and whispers. They were just not, cries and whispers was nominated for best picture, but they weren't made available for foreign language categories because the galaxy brains on the Sweden committee just were banking on career second lighters like Ingvar Skogsberg and Lars Bagnus Lydgren.

Who could for Lucas Bootson. That sounds like a satire of a Swedish director in a Woody Allen movie. Lucas Bootieson. this is one of the sources of ongoing drama in this category, which is one of the things I love, is that you first have the drama within the country of which movie are we going to submit

before we get to the final stage. And in countries where movies are a big deal like France, the process of selecting which movie is going to represent the countries at the Oscars is a big deal. There's a lot of debate over it. So I'm just going to hit you with some stats here. the country with the most all-time nominations is France with 44, and 12 of those were converted into wins. Do they have it actually won since 1993?

It's been a while. Really? That's crazy. Yeah, isn't it, Craig? And Italy... They have a best picture in there, though, right? I guess the artist is a French movie. So, yeah, yeah.

But I don't think it was up for foreign language because it has no language, I believe. Oh, yeah. Lou Pohl. Yeah. The country with most wins is Italy, though. Italy has taken the all-time lead with 14 conversions on 33 nominations. Unsurprisingly, most wins have gone to European countries. Fifty-nine out of 77 wins are claimed by the continent. Nine to Asia, six to the Americas, and three have been credited to African countries, though none of those three was actually directed by a black African. So another way that it's become political is the question of, well, which countries are actually countries is something that comes up. Maybe we'll be hearing about that a little bit later, but they have selected nominations from territories that aren't universally considered to be countries in the past, including Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, and Palestine. The rules around languages have changed too. that's always been kind of a sticking point. It is a requirement still that over 50% of the language in a movie has to be non-English.

But it used to be a rule that the language spoken in the film had to be an official language of the nation submitting the film. That has not been the case for a while. It can now be in any non-English language. And you'll see that in the nominations of recent years where they're often in languages not associated with the submitting country. Canada in particular has Canada's only won the award once for Denier Kans, the Barbarian Invasions in 2004, but has submitted films with dialogue

in a Nuktuhtuk, Hindi, Turkish, Lingala, Mandarin, Kurdish, and in the case of the 1991, Quebec war film, a bullet in the head, an entirely fictional language invented by the film make. Cool. So, just to move ahead to the present day,

we have, like I mentioned, have had a recent rule change, which is the result of the frustrations that people often have over this kind of winnowing process and what it leaves out. There was some of the ways the committees are formulated was changed after four months, three weeks, two days came out, the Christian Manjou movie, which was a Palm Door winner. Kristen Manjou has a new Palm Door winner this year, but that did not even make it to the nomination stage and people were really upset about that. But a more recent controversy was

2003 when France submitted a taste of things as their candidate, even though they had the Palm Door winner, Anatomy of a Fall sitting on their bench. And it's really because of that, that they have made a new major awards carve out, where if a movie wins a major award at one of the six most prestigious festivals, that is Khan, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Busan, or Sundance, that film is automatically eligible for a nomination, whether or not a country actually submits it. And that basically brings us to where we are today. So we were each going to dive into one year's race that we find is especially interesting. Craig, I feel like you're like rip around to go, are you? Am I misreading you?

I'm ready to go. Yeah, I'm pumped. Do you want to lead it off? Yeah, I'll kick things off. So I want to tell you guys about the 65th Oscars, which took place in 1993 honoring the films of 1992. For all of you who are watching or listening, I'm going to play a little clip of Glenn Close reading out the nominees. So here's that. This year, from four countries, the entrance for best foreign language film are From Russia, close to Eden, Nikita Mikhailkoff, director. From Belgium, Dan's, Sten Konings, director. From France, Andochin, Reggie Vanya, director.

From Germany, Stonk, Helmut Dietl, director. So, on the night of the 65th Oscars, there was something strange about the best foreign language film cast. In case you didn't catch it, there were only four nominees. In a category that usually takes five. In fact, February 17th, when the nominees were announced, there had been a fifth, a place in the world submitted by Europe.

It was the first film that Uruguay had entered. But eight days later, that nomination was gone. One year later, a federal judge, Judge Andrew Hawke, had to write down findings of fact around this. It's the closest thing that we have to a neutral account. I'll read from the court document here. It says, on August 20th, 1992, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists invited Uruguay, along with several other foreign countries, to submit films for consideration for the 1992 Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language.

In response, the director of Cinematica Uruguaya, Manuel Martinez Carrel, submitted a place in the world as Uruguay's entry for the Oscar, pursuant to the Academy's special rules for the Best Foreign Language Film Award. Carrell also certified that the creative talent of Uruguay exercised creative control of the film. Along with this submission, Correll sent a publicity flyer that heralded the film as the best of Argentine cinema and described the film setting in the mountains of Argentina. The Academy apparently did not take note of this flyer at the time. That's the court's account of August. That's the court's account of that August.

A certificate claiming Uruguayan creative control and in the same envelope publicity calling the film the best of Argentine. And nobody at the Academy read it. The opinion keeps going into February. The court says on February 17, 1993, the Academy announced at a press conference that the film had been nominated for the Oscar. Almost immediately following this announcement, however, several members of Latin American press asked the Academy's representatives why it had accepted an Argentine film. as a Uruguayan submission. Subsequently, the Academy learned by studying the flyer as well as their own investigation

that Adolfo Aristion, an Argentine citizen and resident, directed, wrote, and co-produced the film. Further, the Academy learned that only two individuals among the creative talent claimed any connection. One of the main actors, Gaston Batty, claimed dual Uruguayan and Argentine nationality.

A second individual, Kathy Sabedra, Aristirisorin's wife was a Uruguayan citizen. So Vedra was the film's costume director and contributed to the film's original story. So two people, an actor with dual nationality and the costume designer who was also the director's wife. That's what Uruguay's claim on the film came down. And notice how the Academy found out, not by studying the flyer. It was once they were questioned by the press.

So there are two accounts of what Uruguay did here that. emerge from this court document and they both can't can't be right here is the academy so Faye Canaan who chaired the foreign language committee she gave this a variety in February of that year the day after this ruling spelling out exactly what your going the Uruguayan contribution amount so from the variety article in February of 1993 she said the problem for us was that this isn't a true co-production. If the creative team had been made up of significant numbers of Uruguayans, along with a group of Argentine filmmakers, we would have had no problem. The only Uruguayans were the costume designer who has a partial story credit and the fifth build cast member. Everything else about the

picture is Argentine. So this is the case against the film. It's a costume designer and a fifth build actor. And that seems to me like a pretty strong case for a lack of overall creative control. I want the case four. I feel very strongly that Uruguay deserves this. I don't know why, but they, give me the case far. Tell me, give me my hopes up. So a week later, this was kind of restated by the Academy's Council who put it a bit harder and said that it's quite clear that a place in the world was looking for a flag of convenience. And it's also quite clear that the Academy rules reserve the Academy, the right to resolve all questions around eligibility.

So Aristotorine himself then spoke to the Buenos Aires Daily in the week that it happened. And this is kind of a translation or the translation that I could find for his comments. He said, I did nothing but use the elements the film already had, which let me fit the Academy's rules. If I hadn't done it, I'd have been an idiot. So he's, he's not claiming that he, like, misread the rules. He's saying that the rules essentially had a shape, and his film genuinely had those, those elements, and he arranged them to fit for this. And that any other filmmaker in his position that wouldn't have done this would have been a fool. So it kind of leaves the question as to whether or not this is gaming the system, or if,

this is a filmmaker who is representing a country with almost no film industry trying to fit a film into a set of rules that are written for larger nations. So I want to get back before we continue to how this kind of resolves to the other four names that Glenn Close reads out, specifically the second one, and that is close to Eden. It was entered by Russia. It was directed by Nikita Mikhailov and shot in Mongolia. It won the Golden Lion at Venice, in 1991, it is also substantially a French film. The producers were Camera 1, Hachet, Premier, UGC images, so three French companies alongside Mikhailov's own studio treat.

The European Audiovisual Observatory Database even lists the producing companies as France and the Soviet Union, specifically in that order. That's not a hostile reading variety in the same piece, that ERISAin is arguing for his life, called it a majority French production set in Mongolia. This isn't only how American press saw it. The Russian journal was very harsh towards this film as well.

So Erycerain did not only argue his case in the press. He took it to the Academy Direct. He took it to its president Robert Ramey and to Fay Canaan, and he brought a list. On that list was black and white in color from Ivory Co. which won in 1977, LeBal from Algeria, which was nominated in 1983, and Dangerous Moves, which won for Switzerland in 1985. So that's three films with three different flags, all of which were French productions.

Leonard Clady reported the meeting in Variety on the 17th of March in 1993, saying, Arisorain, in discussions with Canaan and the Academy President Robert Ramey, had cited such past winners as black and white in color, The Ball, dangerous moves, all French productions, which had flown the colors of, respectively, the Ivory Coast, Algeria and Switzerland at Oscar time. And he was told that this represented past policy. So past policy, three films that did the thing that he was, Arisorain was being thrown out for, and the answer was, that's how policy used to be, which may entirely be true, but it's also not a

rule. It's a description of a rule having changed with no date. attached to the change or specific policy to cite. Hell yeah. In the same conversation, ERISAin pointed at something harder to wave off, not a pass winner, but a film sitting on the same ballot that year, which was still nominated. In Variety, it says, he inquired in regard to this year's film submission from Russia close to Eden, a majority French production set in Mongolia.

It had previously repped France at Sarasota and Venice Film Festivals and won the top prize at the latter. Arisorain said they were unwilling to comment on the film prior to reviewing. So that was from the Variety article. I do want to caution that when looking into this, it seemed that Close Eden did win the top prize of Venice, which the article states, but it does say that it was flying the flag of the Soviet Union in Venice's competition listing. I'm not sure if that was changed later or if it was flying the Soviet Union flag at the time. I wasn't able to establish on Sarasota either way, but the French money on this film is real and that and the festival record is it chosen. So the Academy never really acknowledged this argument. Close to Eden

ended up staying on the ballot and was still nominated on the night. That's not proof that the rule was applied selectively because no one established that close Eden had breached any rules. But it was a distinct challenge to the academy's rules in public that the academy chose not to end. Ultimately, that leads to the case that was filed within federal court, where they were asking for the film to be put back on the ballot, which ultimately they lost. This is what Judge Hawke said in the ruling against them, according to Variety's report of the incident. Citing the balance of irreparable injury to plaintiffs

versus foreseeable harm to defendant, Hawke said in his decision that the burden of proof rested with the plaintiff. He could see no fraud on the part of either side, while academy procedures may have been lax, the judge determined that the organization had essentially followed its rule. or what rules are. The plaintiff, he said, were forthcoming in providing AMPAS with information about the film's origins, personnel, story, and other matters that should have been reviewed prior to the film's nomination and subsequent withdrawal. So no fraud on either side. The Academy essentially

followed its rule, so the disqualification stands. Academy procedures might have been lax, and the plaintiffs were forthcoming. They handed over all the information they they should have. So this is why the ruling kind of, kind of stung. The, the fallout from this was a guideline change. And basically all that it amounted to was them having filmmakers and and submitting bodies fill out a form that asked for the personnel and their country of origin. the yeah that's that's the story of the 65th Oscar foreign film race

I did not expect a courtroom drama awesome I have before you know noticed on the academy's list of foreign language film nominations that they that not in the academy the academies like you said doesn't have it but if you go in the wikipedial list they will have that film with a line through it yeah which is awesome so I always wonder to know what's story behind the film with a line through it. Well, that's exactly what drew me to that specific here. Interesting. Now tell me about stonk.

You know, I need to see, I need to see stonk. It sounds like a parody film that would be like in a Cohen Brothers movie, like a poster in the background. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. The poster, I've only seen the poster. That's all I know of.

And the poster is like, it's, you know, guys with their hair all fuzzed up in a very you know, that 90s poster way, white black background, background with maybe red text. And maybe some guys got his glasses askance and then stunk with an exclamation mark. Is there a blue drop shadow on the text, maybe? They're very well, maybe. Nice. That was awesome. I'm happy to know that whole story.

And I still think your guy was robbed. I think they should have an Oscar nomination. Yeah. Yeah. One costume designer who also contributed to the story, he's wearing two hats. and he is at least half the Uruguayan citizen. That's plenty. I'm like, give, give him, give him one.

I don't know. Give him one. Uruguayan cinema doesn't really have a big world footprint, I feel like. Yeah. So as far as I know, I guess this wasn't Uruguayan cinema was the problem. Yeah. God, that was. As far as I know, they have not been nominated since.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sean, do you want to dive in?

Yeah, I think that actually feeds in nicely to what I wanted to talk about because I was intrigued by the, oh fuck, what was the 78, the films of 2005, Ceremony 2006. I did not watch all of these nominated films, and I'm not really going to talk about the nominated films. It was won by a South African film called Sotsi, which I did end up seeing it, I think, is fine. but what I think is interesting about this year are two one controversy and one personal gripe that I have. So one of the, I will say that yet again, I have used your prompt to pivot to talk about a film I like that didn't get nominated. But first I want to talk about it.

So one of the films, Dylan, you kind of touched on this, nominated this year was Paradise Now, which is a Palestinian film, which I still haven't seen, but I understand is about two men preparing for a suicide bombing. I don't see it either, but it sounds awesome. Yeah, it sounds like I would like to see it. Yeah. I'll get to it.

But this obviously generated controversy because a lot of people don't consider Palestine to be a country, like Israeli advocacy groups, for example, were very against its nomination. And so the Academy at first was going to submit it as from the Palestinian Authority, which I think is a kind of cowardly and liberal move. And then during the ceremony itself, it got presented by Will Smith as from the Palestinian territories, which is like a nice, even more vague way of not acknowledging it. And this worst thing Will Smith has ever done on the Oscar stage.

I think absolutely yes. But I think this is like still relevant to today. Like only a couple years ago, zone of interest sort of had a similar, um, controversy or stir around it, right? Particularly like from Glazer's speech,

but I think also just the content of the film. Um, and this was only a couple of years before there was the, another Palestinian film. I don't have the name handy of the moment that had been rejected for the same reason as it not being a real country. Uh, so I think it's interesting how these rules are like,

you can say very broadly, like, oh yeah, it's an international foreign language film, but the actual rules seem to be very ad hoc and changing all the time. Yeah. Like I said, there has been accepted nominations from Puerto Rico in Hong Kong. Yeah.

They don't have like a firm rubric. They seem to kind of just decide case by case what counts. What's like politically convenient, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is just part of the larger thing of the Oscars being the American Exceptionalism Awards, right? They're not specifically the American ones, but we take it as red that they're the American biggest and best ones. Now, the other thing here that resulted in a rule change that I think is really interesting, and it I think relates into all the Uruguayan stuff.

This is the last year for which the film submitted from the countries had to be in the primary language of that country. and the reason that the rule changed the next year is that there were the film that I want to highlight is Mikkel Hanukkah's cachet, which I think he won best director at Kams for. Sounds right. But it's a, it was submitted by Austria because it's an Austrian director and has Austrian financing, but it is a movie set in France in the French language with French actors. His, I guess, second and a half French film, I don't know, piano teacher's kind of. a mix. And so I don't think this was nearly as controversial, but because of an outcry for this and another Italian film, which was in, I think, Hebrew and Arabic. The next year, it was changed to allow films from any non-prudominantly or non-English language from other countries,

which opens up like Canadian nominations in Hindi and I took. I mean, there's countless other examples. It was just an accident, right? Last year was that nominated? which was a French submission for a film in Farsi. And all because the Academy consistently robs Hanukkah. That's what I'm here to say. Has he never won that award? I feel like no. He may have.

White Ribbon maybe. White Ribbon probably did. And he was, piano teacher was accepted a few years before Cache as a submission but not nominated, even though it is also in French. Yeah. With a predominantly French cast. does not seem to have been consistently enforced in the past because I already mentioned Black Orpheus, which is in Portuguese Brazilian, but was the French submission that year.

So you can find examples in the past before that rule change where they seem to have not cared. Again, selectively enforced. Yeah. And I think it's the case of like someone on the academy was like, oh, I like a movie that should have gone on there. So they changed the rule the next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of ad hoc changing of the rules in response to people griping, which is part of the fun of this super messy category. Yeah, obviously it's like all arbitrary, but the chaotic arbitrariness of this one in particular, I think is really neat.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Nice. Hold on. What actually won that year? That was the Tatsi. Oh, right. Yeah, you said that. What did you see?

Three African winners, did you say? Yeah, yeah. The only one actually directed by an African winner. because the other ones were black and white in color, which Craig mentioned, which was directed by a Frenchman. And it's really a French movie that just happens to be in Cote d'Ivo. And the other is Z, the Costa Scavris movie, which was Algeria's submission.

And that can be a segue into my bit, actually. All right. I might touch on that. An excellent double feature with Cashay. Yeah. And an Algerian film as well. All right. So I wanted to talk about the best foreign language film race from the 39th Academy Awards held in 1967 for the films of 1966.

I kind of like this period because like mid-late 60s, European Cineba is on just a crazy bender. Like there are just so many awesome movies coming out of Europe. All these new waves happening in Europe. and American Hollywood cinema was really starting to look kind of stale and out of date and uncool in the face of all these European cinemas, which isn't to say that most American moviegoers were aware of, you know, movies by Godard and Bunwell and whatever. But in the cities, you know, especially if you lived in New York City where you had like an art house theater probably in your neighborhood, there was definitely a lot of, I think, awareness of these films. and how they were being kind of processed and integrated into Hollywood is kind of an interesting thing to me. It gives us a window just to talk about these movies, which are so many good ones, but also like what are American audiences extracting from these movies.

So the road to the international Oscars generally follows a well-worn path first through Cannes and then through Venice. So let's use that as our roadmap, starting with the 1966. Khan Film Festival held in May of 66. And it was a good one. It was a doozy. The opening night film was a Joseph Losey comedy. There's way too many British comedies in 60s con lineups. I don't know why. But they had a big kind of showcase screening for Orson Wells, The Chimes at Midnight.

And the closing film was Pharaoh, an Egyptian epic from Poland, which I got to say, I'd never heard of this movie before, but I watched it in prep. for this and it's actually really good. There's this really good Egyptian, uh, epic from Poland from 1966. It's cool.

It's cool. You guys know this movie? Farrell? No. No. Yeah. The only Polish, uh,

film I know from that era is the cat with the glasses. It has like a million titles. You know what I'm talking about? Isn't, is that not check maybe? Oh, fuck. It might be,

it might be check. Yeah. It might be like a check new wave. Yeah. All right. I know nothing from Poland. Well, I know like the Andre Wada movies.

and but but yeah otherwise I don't really know the deep cuts but this was the closing night film and it's honestly pretty fucking sick it's pretty hard the best seed is when Polish Pharaoh commands 10,000 Hebrew slaves to help him screw in a light bulb

other films that premiered at the festival include Lewis Gilbert's Elfie David Leans, Dr. Javago Pierre Paulo Pasolini's the Hawks and the Sparrows Andre Wadas the Ashes another Polish movie John Frankenheimer seconds which is so awesome.

Miklo Shiancho's The Roundup and Usmane Sembene's Black Girl was out of competition. Pretty insane lineup, actually. But Fora Khan held during the peak of the French New Wave, it was very light on French movies. There were actually only two French movies in competition.

One of them was the nun from Jacques Rivette, who was a Caye de Cinema guy, the Céé des Cinema. That film journal was kind of like at the forefront, and sort of gatekeepers of what French New Wave Cinema was. The other French film playing in competition was one from a filmmaker very much not aligned with Cayet de Cinema.

Claude La Louch. In fact, in a review of his first film, Kaye de Cinema wrote a review that included the line, Claude Leloush, remember this name because you will never hear it again. La Lusch was born into an Algerian Jewish family in Paris. And he started drifting towards cinema when he didn't know what else to do with his life and began filming documentary footage of sporting events. In his late 20s at the dawn of the 60s, he began directing feature films, which were all failures commercially and at the box office. But his fortunes changed when he got this new movie, a man and a woman, into the in-competition lineup of Khan 66. It is a modern romance starring Jean-Louis Tritignon and Anuk Eme.

It is cool and faithful and blaze. It has very crisp cinematography, which switches between color and sepia tones. It had an instantly iconic musical score by Francis Lai. Even if you've never heard of a man and a woman before, you have probably heard the music from the film. And viewers were charmed by it when it opened at Cannes. Somewhere anyway, Coyote Cinema stuck to their guns and wrote that

it has not a centimeter of celluloid worth preserving. But this time, the public wasn't really Kaye's side, most of the critics actually kind of thought the movie was cool and it ended up being a winner. In those years, the con didn't hand out the palm door for weird kind reasons. They

did the Grand Prix. The Grand Prix was considered the top prize in those years. The Grand Prix ended up being a tie between two films. One was Pietro Germey's anthology Comedia Alitaliana in Italian comedy film which hasn't aged very well. And the other was a man and a woman.

And when La Lelouches' film went to general release. It was a hit in France and it exported very well. It very quickly was released in America and did pretty good at the box office. It became a popular film in America. And it really did kind of become cemented as a bit of a classic French film in many people's esteem. A few years ago, Kahn used an image from a man and a woman as their official poster for that year's festival, which is kind of Khan's way of cementing a film as like a con classic. And it has had sequels and restorations. And even Cayet de Cinema at one point did a reappraisal where they, you know,

like 30 years later or something where they said, oh, this movie's good actually. I think they should have stuck their guns. I think about it in a woman is actually a pretty thin and crappy movie, even though it has some really good, really good color cinematography. It's not that good, though. It's not an interesting film. Anyways, that was so what happened at Khan.

that's like when Pitchfork retroactively improves a review to match. That's the worst. I hate that stuff. Yeah, I hate that stuff. But it's like, oh, everybody thinks it's a classic now. Now we got to change our review. No, have some balls. You know, stick to your goods.

Anyways, let's move on to Venice. So the Venice Film Festival was held in late August, early September. The kind of timing of these festivals is basically the same as it still is today. There was a smaller in-competition lineup. at Venice, but it did include some notable titles, including a lot more notable French films than we actually had at Cannes that year, including the latest films by Robert Brasson, Francois Truffaut, Roger Vardin, Agnes Varda, as well as the premiere in competition of Roger Corman's Biker Flick, the Wild Angels, for some reason. But that's cool. But there was one explosive

premiere that completely changed the festival. So let me tell you about another film guy, Gilo Ponte Corvo, who was born into a well-off, colorful Jewish family. family in Pisa. One of his brothers had made some headlines because he was a nuclear physicist who defected to the Soviet Union to help them with their nuclear program. Gilo, like his brother Bruno, was a communist, though a bit of a shiftless one. Like many Jews in Italy under Mussolini, he left the country. He spent some time in the south of France where he worked as a tennis instructor and became friends with Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre as a tennis instructor. And he didn't think too much of cinema at first, according to him, until he caught a screening

of Roberto Rossellini's neo-realist classic Pisa just after the Second World War. And it completely changed his mind about the movies and really opened his mind to the power of neolism of that kind of humanism transmitted through kind of stark, journalistic images. So he decided to become a filmmaker. And some of his early films did pretty good, including Capo from 1960, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film with the Academy Awards. That's a film about Nazi concentration camps.

Shortly after Capo came out, he did spend some time in Algeria with a journalist, which so we're talking around 1960, which Algeria was still in the grips of a pretty brutal struggle against the French regime. which was refusing to seed control of its colony. And he was originally sort of scouting for a movie that never got made, but this experience stuck with him, and he eventually had the idea, the determination to make a movie a few years later that would use the techniques of neorealism to tell a hard political story.

By the time the Battle of Algiers premiered in Venice in 1966, that war had been over for years. France had finally relinquished control of Algeria in 1962. But French culture hadn't really processed the loss of the colonies, hadn't really digested the truth of the brutality of the colonial regimes, attempts to hold on to power throughout the 50s and up until the early 60s. 1.2 million Frenchmen had been conscripted to go fight in Algiers during the war in those last final years when it really devolved into terrorism.

and torture. So France was full of veterans at that point who had seen some shit, who had done some shit in many cases, and who didn't necessarily want to be criticized for what they had done. It was just a very sensitive topic that hadn't really been processed by the culture at large. In Ponticorval's, the Battle of Algeris was anything but delegate. It was made with the collaboration of the Algerian government and was brutally direct and realistic in its recreation of how all this went down. He intentionally used techniques to make it look like news real footage, to make it look as real as possible to the point where a lot of people discovering the movie today feel like they're watching or believe they are watching actual real footage from the Algerian War. When the movie was released into American theaters, they put a disclaimer on the film before it saying like, this is not a documentary because people read it as a documentary.

That's how convincingly he revived this. but French critics at Venice were not happy when they heard about this movie. They organized a boycott. They refused to attend the premiere of the movie. And they refused to write about it or acknowledge it. But the critics who did attend were blown away and generally loved it. So it won the Golden Lion as Best Film at the Venice Festival that year. And when the announcement was made, the French critics stormed out of the auditorium and refused to file any more stories about that year's festival.

festival. The Battle of Algiers was immediately banned in France. The band only lasted a couple years, but it was not until 1971 when somebody actually had the guts to screen it, because even after the band was lifted, there were right-wing veterans groups in France that were threatening to firebomb any theater that would show it. And yet outside of France, most of the rest of the world was like, yeah, this movie's awesome. It was really popular, actually. So before we get to Holly, Wood's biggest night. Let's quickly check in on the New York Film Festival, which as today is held a few weeks after Venice, because there the opening night film came from the newly thriving film scene

in Czechoslovakia, because Czechoslovakia was also experiencing a new wave that was really just starting to burgeon at that time. The films that opened the New York Film Festival was Loves of a Blonde by Milosh Foreman, which had screened before, but this was making its big kind of gala premiere in North America. and I just rewatch Loves of a Blonde to prepare for this and it's so good. I really like it.

It's just a very, very charming, very thoughtful, humanist movie that really uses its kind of awkwardness very well. The best thing Milish Foreman has ever made, I think, I think, by a couple heads. So that premiered,

had a big galae greeting anyways at New York. Czechoslovakia, their new wave had already caught in Hollywood's notice because the previous year, a Czech film, the shop on Main Street, had one best foreign language film, despite being just the second submission that Czechoslovakia had ever made to the Oscars

and their first nomination. And the year after this went under discussion, another Czech film closely watched Trains, would also win. And the year after that, the next Milosh Foreman movie, the Fireman's Ball, would get a nomination.

So in their first five years of submitting films, Czechoslovakia scored four nominations and two wins, which is a pretty elite stat line out of the gate. As for Foreman, just to get ahead of ourselves a little bit, his career in Czechoslovakia ended when the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 68, and he was fired from his job, and he ended up in New York and made a movie that was a bomb, and didn't do anything for a few years before he was unexpectedly hired

to direct one flew over the cuckoo's nest and became the director of a Best Picture-winning film, one of two Best Picture Women's films he would direct over the course of a long career in Hollywood, the other being Amadeus. But another film that played at the New York Film Festival that year, just to get back on track, was three, which is a Yugoslavian film, a very stark and brutal drama about the Second World War from director Alexander Petrovich. The Yugoslavian film revival, maybe not as well known as the Czech film revival,

was still catching Hollywood's attention at the time. The Yugoslav New Wave is known as the Black Wave. I don't know how they kind of called dibs on like the hardest name of the new wave movements in Europe, but they're called the Black Wave. And you might be surprised. Well, I was surprised, I should say, to discover that a Yugoslav film was dominated for best porn language Oscar on five different occasions between 59 and 70. So let's bring this all together to Hollywood's biggest night. Though there were definitely way better French movies released in 1966, including O'Hazar, Balthazar, Massa, Mastard. Euland Feminine, the Jean-Codard movie,

William Klein's, Who Are You, Polly Magoo? It was still probably a no-brainer for France to submit a man and a woman movie that had already opened in America, that Americans already liked and were buying tickets in large numbers to see. So that was France's submission. The Battle of Algeria probably could have been claimed by Algeria. That probably would have passed. There was text at the start of the original release of the film

that announces that this is the first major Algerian production. Nonetheless, it was claimed by Italy first, Italy got dibs, so it became the official Italian submission for the Academy Awards. As I mentioned, Algeria would get a win, not just a nomination, but a win a couple years later, but for a movie that was mostly a Greek movie,

Z, but anyways. So a man and a woman was nominated. The Battle for Algiers was nominated. Rounding out the five nominations were Loves of a Blonde. Three also made it in, as did the Polish Egyptian epic Pharaoh. that Pharaoh is in there too. A notable snub was Persona, which is one of the Bergman movies that Sweden did submit.

They kind of stopped submitting his movies after this, so maybe that's why. Anyways. 39th Academy Awards were held in April of 1967. These were the awards won by a man for all seasons. The most nominations were for Who's Afraid of Virginia Wall. But we're talking about forest language, foreign language films. And here's the thing about this category. As fun as it is, it's often the easiest race to handicap.

Because often there is one film in the category that has other nominations and other categories. So you can just say, well, that's the one that's going to win. And it does every time. So that's what happened here, honestly. It was a bit of a spoiler. A man and a woman did not just get a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also nominated for original screenplay, best director for Claude La Louch, and Best Actress for Anuka and Aime.

So unsurprisingly, when Patricia Neal opened the envelope on the stage, the name she read out was a man and a woman. La Lusch took the stage and said in French that he hopes, many filmmakers all over the world make lots of movies, so there will be no more wars. Which, sure, why not? I think the fact that this movie was triumphant, that it received this level of celebration, shows that one of the things that Americans is curious as many Americans were. about European film at this time, and particularly the French New Wave, I think one of the things that we see that they're really extracting from it

was just that the movies were chic, that they were cool, that there was, that the camera movements, the music, was modernist in a way that Hollywood was no longer modernist. Hollywood had become Kichi in the 60s.

It needed a revival that was still a couple of years away at this point. And I think to be a little pessimistic about it, the success of a, a man and a woman shows that they were more curious and intrigued by the coolness of French films than they were about the formal experimentation and the political confrontation of like the Goddard movies for example. That's me being pessimist. On the other hand, if you look at some of those other anomalies, notably Algiers, and three,

which is also a really hard, stark, brutal movie, there is clearly also a big appetite for extracting brutal realism from European movies. And the thing is, the Battle for Algiers would get a broad American release two years later in 1968. And it was a big success when it did get that broad release. This was a time when American public opinion had really turned against the Vietnam War. There was a big appetite for anti-colonialism in America. They didn't really have skin in the game the way the French did either.

So they could kind of just like use this war as like a substitute. for whatever anti-colonialist ambitions that, you know, leftist-minded people had. And in that two years later, in the 1969 Oscars, Battle for Algiers got nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, two years after getting, being one of the few films to get nominations in different years. Because in the other categories, to be eligible, you have to have a film released in America during that year, except for a foreign language film. So that allows this rare case where a foreign language film can get nominations in that category in one year, but other categories in a later year if it's officially released in America later.

The legacy of the Battle of Alger's is more than... Is that still the case? I believe so, yeah. I believe so. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. And the legacy is more than just that, of course, for the film. It really became part of the vernacular, that film, of radical leftist movements in America all over the world.

even though for a long time it was officially very hard to find and it spent a couple decades in the wilderness being kind of trafficked on VHS tapes. But in the late 60s, early 70s, the Black Panthers had some copies of the film when they held popular screenings of it. It was used, screenings of it were used as inspirations by the IRA in Ireland and by the Palestinian Liberation Organization. On the other side of the spectrum, it has also been used as counterinsurgency training. both by the military hunter in Argentina and even by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2003, the Pentagon hosted a screening of the film as part of counter-insurgency training for the Iraq War.

I think you can see how that kind of legacy of this movie as a touchstone for radical leftists is still current in one battle after another, where Paul Thomas Anderson can include a scene of Leo's character smoking a joint and was, watching it on TV and still 60 years later, he can assume that a large portion of his audience is going to get that, is going to get what that's about. And I think that's really the more lasting legacy of the film. And then Obama can put it on his year-end list as a great

new discovery of his. Craig, if you can put that meme I made in here, I appreciate it. Yeah, that's the story of that. So now that we've talked about the past a lot, I feel like before we wrap things up, we should bring things back up to the current day. So I've mentioned that there is a rule change. There is this new carve out for movies that win major awards that they automatically get into the admissibility. Craig, do you think that this new rule is something that's going to change the nominations that we're eventually going to see for this upcoming Academy Award? Well, I'm not entirely sure. guess it kind of depends on how things shake out. Yeah, what do you think? I'm not sure it will.

It is still a pretty small carve-out when you think of it. Like if 90 countries are submitting films, you're only adding six to the mix, maximum six, and maybe less, because if English language movies win those top prizes, well, that's one that's not admissible anyways. And some of these movies that are going to win top awards are still going to be submitted by a country, just so they get credit for it. In fact, that has already happened. Fjord, which won the Pondor. We found out it's a co-production between Norway, France, and Romania,

maybe other countries, too. It's a very European co-production. We found out that Romania is going to make it their official selection for best international feature, despite the fact that it's already eligible because it won the POMDor. So under this new rule, it's eligible anyways. Presumably that's being done because Romania wants the credit if it wins, which it probably has a good chance of doing being the Palm Door winner. So will this change anything else?

I mean, we might see some countries pivot away from picking the big award winners because they'll think that it'll be there anyways. This might affect France, which is always a big consideration because France always has a lot of movies that are also co-productions. And so they always have this kind of glut of possible paths that they can go down. which, like I said, often generates controversy. The fact that they picked it was just an accident last year, as you mentioned, Sean, was very controversial for a lot of people in France.

There are a lot of people in France saying we should be picking movies that are in the French language about French culture, like Nouvelle Vague. A lot of people wanted that to be the French pick. And as I was saying on last week's episode, I think, Craig, I don't think that France is going to pick Minotar, the Andres Vignetzev movie, which is kind of, which, had a big premiere at Cannes, but it's a Russian language movie that will not be submitted by Russia because it is not a production from Russia. And Zvegnev is not associated with the Russian government anymore. I don't think France will do that because I think there's too much of a backlash towards the idea of picking movies that are not in French. So, yeah, I don't know if this will affect this race at all, but we'll have to wait and see what the Venice winner is, too,

because that might really change the considerations. Yeah, there's already been a few countries that have submitted so far. I think I was tracking them around eight. We could just go over them and see if there's any thing that you find particularly surprising. Yeah, sure. Okay, so what I've been tracking so far

is that Belgium has submitted Coward, which was the Lucas Don't film. Which was at Cannes. We talked about it a bit last week, South Korea deciding to submit possible love, which was cutting off the path for hope, which kind of early on seemed like what everyone was expecting would be the nomination coming out of South Korea.

But I think, as we discussed last week, I think possible love is probably a good choice. 6.5 minutes standing O according to IndyR. Solid stats. Yeah. So that is at Venice as well in competition. It's been getting great reviews. The people who were at the premier screening, as far as I've seen,

have said nothing about good things to say about it. Yeah, so that's definitely one to be watching. So Germany has selected every time, and that was the uncertain regard winner at Khan. Austria submitted Rose. Romania, of course, submitted Fjord. Palestine has submitted citizen Osama and Japan has submitted all of a sudden.

That was the one was a surprise for me. I know we already mentioned that, but that's a French-Japanese co-production, the new Ryuske Hamaguchi movie. I kind of thought that, that, yeah, Japan would maybe see if France would leave that on the table, but would maybe do,

like, don't look back, which is the Hirokazu Korya movie, which just premiered at Venice. And it's been getting better reviews then Coriade his movie from Khan, Dick in a Box. Dick in a box. Or the samurai and the gambler, the Kyoshi Kurosawa movie.

But yeah, they seem to be going all in on all of a sudden the Hamaguchi Hamaguchi film, which maybe shows that they didn't think that there's any chance that France would put it forward. So they're like, we better claim it. Or maybe they thought France was going to claim it. So they thought they'd get it before they did. Yeah, that's possible. that's something that I hadn't considered, but definitely.

Yeah, the Romanian one is like, I don't know if it's surprising to me or not. Like, there are other Romanian movies that have been getting buzz out here. Like the new Rado Jude was at Khan out of competition, but still I heard like really good things about it. I could see them going with that instead. It's a diary of a chamber made adaptation. It sounds really cool. I could have kind of imagined Romania just trying to get more pokers in the fire by being like if you're fjords eligible anyway.

so like why not go somewhere else but again I guess they want the credit for Fjord if they didn't snap it up that's part of this gamesmanship too like do you take it or do you leave it for somebody else Norway could claim Fjord it's filmed in Norway the title is Fjord it's got a Renada Rinceve it's

Norway has its fingerprints on it I'm curious as to whether the idea because this does cover like a case that is relatively like well known that involves both Norway and Romanian governments

if the fact that they didn't like the idea of Norway owning this perspective that seems to be sympathetic towards Romania and like critical of Norway they kind of wanted to

own that. I'm just speculating us. So what could possibly be, but I have no idea. Is this like an immigration narrative? I'll just, I'll watch it. I mean, what do you can. I'm stoked to watch it too. But it is, we've covered it before on the show.

And there has been some like political takes about the movie. A lot of people have decided to interpret it as kind of a conservative film about like the state in Norway being too powerful and infringing on the rights of a family to raise their children the way they want to. Okay. But that's some people's interpretations. obviously I'll wait and see the actual movie myself. But I'm very intrigued by the idea that this year's Palm Door winner could be the Conservatives champion at the Oscars. The Uvei, the new Uve Bowl movie.

It's a long. Yeah. I don't know. It's in English though, right? I don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody's actually suited. People just pretend to have seen it.

Do we know, Craig, what Brazil's submission is? because I feel like I haven't, I feel like I'm waiting for the big Brazilian movie to come this year. You know, have we heard of a big Brazilian movie? No. You'll know when I fly the flag that. We've just gotten so used to there being a big Brazilian movie making a splash of the Oscars.

Like last year, Oliver Lacha, the Spanish director, said that the Brazilians could submit a shoe and get nominated. But this year it feels like we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Let's see the shoe. I don't know. We'll see. All right. I got nothing else. Any final thoughts about this before we wrap this stuff up? No, I think that about covers it. Next week, we can dive into kind of look a little bit deeper into what has gone on at Venice and Tell Your Eats.

It'll be wrapped up and we'll have a better idea where things stand. but yeah we should we should probably know who the golden line winner is by the time we record next so we'll you'll get our reactions to that and they'll be juicy um just like our reactions to the cod winners were and you know Toronto is starting very soon and the new york film festival right after that it really is one thing after another right yeah all right well um let's let's put a cap on this thing this has been fun thanks guys I had a good time oh do you have initial thoughts on the leaked footage of the Daniels event film? Nope.

Oh, okay. How about this? Do you have any thoughts on the speculation that the, that Digger is actually a musical in disguise? Have you seen this theory? So I hadn't heard the musical theory. No. I did like hear that it is,

all the footage that we have seen is, apparently from like the first act and that it's actually like the framing the framing narrative or it's like a play about something of that that happened years prior. So I don't know how true any of that is. But I'm, I'm intrigued. The theory basically goes, like you said, we have like very limited footage about it, which is almost like they're hiding something. And in the footage we do have, you can see one brief clip where Tom Cruise is clearly on a rotating stage in the middle of a bunch of people. Seems like musical shit. So, yeah, that's basically the cruical conspiracy theory that's being floated out there.

All right, let's get out of here. We're getting too silly. So, yeah, I will see you next week. My name's Dylan. You can find some of my writing about film on Substack. Just look for my name, Dylan, D-Y-L-A-N-Fergerson. It's all free. Read anything you want as much as your eyeballs can have.

I'm very happy to have Sean Rourke back with us Sean, thank you. Any final thoughts for our listener? No, I've got nothing profound to say. Just always fun to come and talk my bullshit with you. Yeah, we're all about talking bullshit on here.

Salty Craig, any final thoughts for all those folks out there? Just like, subscribe. Let us know in the comments what year you'd like to hear. us dive deep on for the foreign film race or any other race. Love to hear which races you're excited about so that we can dive in and maybe share them with.

Let us know what you think. Yeah. And if we do another history of a category episode, we've done a few of these in the past. Let us know which category you'd like us to go deep on. What tickles your fancy there? All right. Let's wrap things up. We'll see you with our reactions to the Venice.

results next time on Oscars outside. It's just one of those days.