Oscars 2026: It’s time to overhaul the ‘Best International Feature’ category
Every time the Oscars nominations are announced, you can guarantee an avalanche of ‘snubs and surprises’ lists.
Sure, F1 has absolutely no business in the ‘Best Picture’ list, and Sentimental Value should have earned a casting nomination just based on the maths (it earned four acting noms), but there’s another sore spot worth considering this year that is exactly 60 years old: the ‘Best International Feature’ category.
Way back in 1956, the Academy decided that cinema existed outside of Hollywood. It might not be worthy of major awards (‘Best Picture’ was out of the question), but maybe it was worth a pat on the head. That year saw the introduction of the ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ category, which did away with the sporadic and condescending practice of handing out honorary awards to various international movies, and these days, the category goes by the name ‘Best International Feature.’
There are many reasons to take issue with this category, with the eligibility criteria the most obvious (more on that in a moment), but also the increasing issue of redundancy. As the Academy diversifies and more non-English language movies make their way into the major categories, the ‘International Feature’ race is becoming decidedly less relevant.
The eligibility issue
The Oscar voters do not get to choose which films are nominated for ‘Best International Feature’, at least not entirely, as that privilege belongs to individual national committees. This opens the door to all kinds of embarrassments, and most recently, the exasperation was directed at the Film Federation of India, which put forward the bridal comedy Laapataa Ladies for the 2024 Oscars instead of Payal Kapadia’s universally acclaimed All We Imagine As Light. The former was mildly praised, but the latter won the ‘Grand Prix’ at Cannes and was ranked number one on countless lists of the year’s best films.
According to the FFI, Kapadia’s film, which was shot in Mumbai, featured an Indian cast and was made by an Indian crew, was simply ‘not Indian enough’. According to FFI president Ravi Kottarakara, it was like “watching a European film take place in India”, and it led them to choose Laapataa Ladies instead, which didn’t even toe the nomination line.
The other eligibility criticism that I’ll highlight is that countries are only allowed to put forward one film, and I don’t need to go into why this is bad. American and British films have made up the entire pool of ‘Best Picture’ nominees since the very first Oscars ceremony in 1929, with only a handful of exceptions, and yet the rest of the world only gets one measly film per country.
The redundancy issue
Now that the Academy has internationalised and diversified its voting body, more and more non-English language films are cropping up in the ‘Best Picture’ race. Of the 22 international films that have been nominated, more than half were from the last decade. Parasite was the first non-English language movie to win ‘Best Picture’, and in the past three years, more than one non-English language film has been nominated in the category each year.
This is obviously a good thing, but it also leads to redundancy. Most of the international films nominated in this category also receive nominations for ‘Best International Feature’, which raises a question about the fairness of a film like ‘Parasite’ winning both awards. The categories should be mutually exclusive to ensure that more international films receive recognition; as is, there are only five slots for the ‘International Feature’ category, a paltry allocation for a roster that is supposed to cover the entire world outside of the US and UK.
This year, for example, two of the five films, Brazil’s The Secret Agent and Norway’s Sentimental Value, are also nominated for ‘Best Picture’, while acclaimed films like Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Mascha Schilinski’s Cannes award-winner Sound of Falling were shut out.
So, what’s the solution?
For decades, the ‘Best International Feature’ category has been debated, criticised, and revamped, but the increasing rate of ‘Best Picture’ redundancies, coupled with the eternal eligibility issues, has made an overhaul all the more urgent.
In a perfect world, any non-English language film that meets the release criteria of ‘Best Picture’ would be eligible for both categories, and there would be no need for national committees choosing which films to submit and no one country, one film nonsense.
Additionally, any non-English language film that meets the threshold for a ‘Best Picture’ nomination would be disqualified from the ‘International Feature’ category, opening up the awards to more international films. Given where things are headed, it is entirely possible that, without making these categories mutually exclusive, we will soon end up with five international films that are nominated for ‘Best Picture’ and make up the entire ‘International Feature’ category.
Mutual exclusivity is predicated on the idea that a ‘Best Picture’ nomination is more prestigious than a ‘Best International Feature’ win, which some may find objectionable. It would also inevitably turn the latter category into a silver medal of sorts, but it already is, as evidenced by the fact that only some of the films make it into the ‘Best Picture’ category.
There is also nothing wrong with having multiple award tiers. Other prestigious bodies already hand out unofficial second-place awards, most notably Cannes’ ‘Grand Prix’, and that hasn’t seemed to bother filmmakers or hurt their chances with other voting bodies. For example, the most recent ‘Grand Prix’ recipient was Sentimental Value, which is now in contention for ‘Best Picture’.
Another potential quibble is that, if you can nominate more than one film per country and national submission committees no longer play a role in the selection process, smaller movies from countries with smaller film industries will fall under the radar without the support of a major distributor. This could be at least partially remedied by requiring a certain number of countries to be represented in the shortlist put forward by the Academy’s International Feature Film Preliminary Committee.
The fact that this topic is even up for debate is a good sign, as for decades, the ‘International Feature’ category was barely taken seriously, and now, it’s threatening to make up half of the ‘Best Picture’ race. Maybe someday there will be so many non-English language movies in the running for the top prize that the Academy will have to introduce a ‘Best Hollywood Feature’ category to appease the Americans.
