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Oscars 2024: Is Acadamy’s International Category Truly Global? Exploring the nominations and overall wins so far
Parasite encouraged international films into the Academy Awards and being recognized for their state-of-the-art efforts. But are the nominations truly focusing on global films? Let's read.
It was the year 2019 when the Academy Awards introduced a new category. Formerly known as the best foreign-language film, was now called the Academy’s international category. The 2019 Korean thriller comedy movie Parasite became the first ever to win the award in this section, while it even was the first non-English film to win the best picture.
Since the introduction of this new bracket by the awards, there have been certain traces that the international category has not been truly international.
Does the Academy’s International Category truly include all global movies?
With an aim to welcome the global film community and at the same time also have diversification in its membership, the Academy took this decision and renamed the category.
Following the change, a statement by the then co-chairs of the international film committee, Larry Karaszewski and Diane Weyermann, was released which read “We believe that ‘international feature film’ better represents this category, and promotes a positive and inclusive view of filmmaking, and the art of film as a universal experience.”
Although with the win of Parasite, the best picture category has attracted several foreign-language films such as Minari, Drive My Car, and All Quiet on the Western Front, plus this year’s Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives and The Zone of Interest, the international category which was actually aiming at movies from different parts of the world has only seen a heavy presence of European productions. 
Since 2020, the 12 nominated films were largely from Europe. Although in 2022, Japan’s Drive My Car won in the Academy's International Category, Denmark’s Another Round won in 2021 and All Quiet on the Western Front, a German production won in 2023.
Speaking of the nominations, in the last three years, only two have been nominated from Asia, one from Africa, a South American movie, while a whopping eight nominations were alone from Europe.
One can easily trace the same list in this year's nominations as well. Amongst the names, a good four movies are European while just one is from Asia.
If not Academy’s International Category where are the global movies headed?
While the Academy's International Category has been welcoming European movies, the nonfiction category is filled with diverse movies ranging in nations. All five nominees for the documentary feature category belong to international work.
Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and 20 Days in Mariupol are the movies depicting different parts of the world and have been included in this year's documentary feature category.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024. Keep your fingers crossed if you wish to make your favorite movie win.
ALSO READ: Academy Awards 2024: 20 Acclaimed Movies With Zero Nominations
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