List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best International Feature Film
This page lists the winners and nominees for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which is handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.[1]
When the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929 to honor films released in 1927/28, there was no separate category for foreign language films. Between 1947 and 1955, the Academy presented Special/Honorary Awards to the best foreign language films released in the United States.[2] These awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no award was given in 1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the 1956 Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.
Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language Film Award is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winning film's director,[1] but is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. Over the years, the Best Foreign Language Film Award and its predecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the 59 awards handed out by the Academy since 1947 to foreign language films, fifty have gone to European films,[A] four to Asian films,[B1] three to African films and only two to films from the Americas. The late Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini directed four Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award-winning motion pictures during his lifetime, more than any other director. If Special Awards are taken into account, then Fellini's record is tied by his fellow countryman Vittorio De Sica. The Soviet epic War and Peace (1967), for its part, is by far the most expensive and longest motion picture to have won the Best Foreign Language Film Award. Filmed over several years in the 1960s for more than $100 million and running for approximately seven hours, it is the costliest film ever made in history if measured in inflation-adjusted terms.[3]
Winners and nominees
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In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release; the ceremonies are always held the following year. Films in bold and in dark blue background have received a Special/Honorary Award; those in bold and in light blue background have won a regular Academy Award of Merit. Films that are neither highlighted nor in bold are the nominees. When sorted chronologically, the table always lists the winning film first and then the four other nominees. The Submitting country column indicates the country that officially submitted the film to the Academy, and is not necessarily indicative of the film's main country of production. The original titles of the films are also mentioned, as well as the names of the directors and the languages used in the dialogue track, even though none of these elements is officially included in the nomination. When several languages are used in a film, the predominant one is always listed first; the names of the other languages are written in smaller typesize and placed between brackets. When a film's original title is in a language that uses a non-Roman script, it is first transliterated into the Latin alphabet and then written in its original script. Films from the former Yugoslavia are written in both Latin and Cyrillic due to the fact that the previously official Serbo-Croatian language used both alphabets. Chinese film titles are romanized according to the pinyin system, and are written using the characters employed in their submitting country, i.e. traditional Chinese ones for films submitted by Hong Kong and Taiwan, and simplified Chinese ones for films submitted by the People's Republic of China.
Awards tally by country
This table shows the total number of nominations and awards received by each country. It follows Academy convention by not grouping the tally of extinct countries with that of their successor state(s).[5]
| Country | Number of winning films |
Number of nominated films |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
 Italy
|
13 | 27 | [Q] |
 France
|
12 | 34 | [R] |
 Spain
|
4 | 19 | |
 Sweden
|
3 | 14 | |
 Japan
|
3 | 11 | [B2] |
 Soviet Union
|
3 | 9 | [S1] |
 Netherlands
|
3 | 7 | |
 Denmark
|
2 | 7 | |
 Germany
|
2 | 7 | [T1] |
 Czechoslovakia
|
2 | 6 | [U1] |
 Switzerland
|
2 | 5 | |
| Germany (West)
|
1 | 8 | [T2] |
 Hungary
|
1 | 8 | |
 Argentina
|
1 | 5 | |
 Russia
|
1 | 5 | [S2] |
 Algeria
|
1 | 4 | |
 Canada
|
1 | 4 | |
| Czech Republic
|
1 | 3 | [U2] |
 Taiwan
|
1 | 3 | |
 South Africa
|
1 | 2 | |
 Bosnia & Herzegovina
|
1 | 1 | [V1] |
 Ivory Coast
|
1 | 1 | |
 Poland
|
0 | 8 | |
 Israel
|
0 | 7 | |
 Mexico
|
0 | 7 | |
 Yugoslavia
|
0 | 6 | [V2] |
 Belgium
|
0 | 5 | |
 Brazil
|
0 | 4 | |
 Greece
|
0 | 4 | |
 Norway
|
0 | 4 | |
 India
|
0 | 3 | |
 Austria
|
0 | 2 | |
 China
|
0 | 2 | |
 Hong Kong
|
0 | 2 | |
 United Kingdom
|
0 | 2 | |
 Cuba
|
0 | 1 | |
 Finland
|
0 | 1 | |
 Georgia
|
0 | 1 | [S3] |
 Germany (East)
|
0 | 1 | [T3] |
 Iceland
|
0 | 1 | |
 Iran
|
0 | 1 | |
 Kazakhstan
|
0 | 1 | [S4] |
 Macedonia
|
0 | 1 | [V3] |
 Nepal
|
0 | 1 | |
 Nicaragua
|
0 | 1 | |
 Palestine
|
0 | 1 | [P2] |
 Puerto Rico
|
0 | 1 | [N2] |
 Vietnam
|
0 | 1 | |
 Uruguay
|
0 | 0 (1) |
[O2] |
See also
- Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of Academy Award-winning foreign language films (in categories other than the Foreign Language Film category itself)
Notes
- A^ : Europe's tally includes three awards won by the Soviet Union and an award won by Russia. It also includes five Special/Honorary Awards: two won by Italy, two won by France and one shared between them for The Walls of Malapaga (1949). The latter award is counted only once in Europe's tally, whereas it is included twice in the country-based table as it figures in both Italy's and France's tallies.
- B1 2 : Japan's three-award tally is entirely comprised of Honorary Awards.
- C^ : Shoe-Shine (1946) won a Special Award because "the high quality of this motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity".
- D^ : Monsieur Vincent (1947) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1948.
- E^ : The Bicycle Thief (1948) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949.
- F^ : The Walls of Malapaga (1949) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States in 1950.
- G^ : Rashomon (1950) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.
- H^ : Forbidden Games (1952) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1952.
- I^ : Gate of Hell (1953) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1954.
- J^ : Samurai, The Legend of Musashi (1954) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1955.
- K1 2 3 4 5 : For the 29th Academy Awards, the names of the producers were included in the nominations for the Foreign Language Film category. Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti won the award for La Strada (1954). Gyula Trebitsch and Walter Koppel were nominated for The Captain of Köpenick (1956), Annie Dorfmann for Gervaise (1956), Masayuki Takagi for Harp of Burma (1956), and O. Dalsgaard-Olsen for Qivitoq (1956).
- L^ : The film received its 1969 nomination under the title My Night with Maud. It had no US distributor at the time. When it was released in Los Angeles on April 15, 1970, it became eligible for consideration for Academy Awards in other categories, and received a 1970 nomination for Writing under the title My Night at Maud's. Today, the latter title is the most commonly used when referring to the film in the English-speaking world.
- M^ : Originally released under the title La Victoire en chantant, the film was reissued in France under the title Noirs et Blancs en couleurs (a literal French translation of its English title Black and White in Color) following its 1976 Academy Award win.
- N1 2 : Although films produced inside the United States are ineligible for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, those produced in U.S. overseas possessions are not. Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, was thus able to receive a nomination for What Happened to Santiago (1989).
- O1 2 : THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL NOMINATION. After nominations were announced, information came to light that showed that A Place in the World (1992) was wholly produced in Argentina, and had insufficient Uruguayan artistic control. The film was declared ineligible and removed from the final ballot.
- P1 2 : Paradise Now (2005) was initially nominated as a submission from Palestine and presented as such on the official Academy website. However, following protests from pro-Israeli groups in the United States, the Academy decided to designate it as a submission from the Palestinian Authority, a move that was decried by the film's director Hany Abu-Assad. During the awards ceremony, the film was eventually announced by presenter Will Smith as a submission from the Palestinian Territories.
- Q^ : Italy's tally includes two Special Awards for Shoe-Shine (1946) and The Bicycle Thief (1948), as well as an Honorary Award shared with France for The Walls of Malapaga (1949).
- R^ : France's tally includes a Special Award for Monsieur Vincent (1947) as well as two Honorary Awards: one for Forbidden Games (1952) and one shared with Italy for The Walls of Malapaga (1949).
- S1 2 3 4 : The Soviet Union, which received all of its nominations for Russian-language films, was nominated for the last time in 1984 and was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991. Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan are the only post-Soviet states to have been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Award.
- T1 2 3 : East Germany received its only nomination in 1976, and West Germany was nominated for the last time in 1985. The two countries formally reunited on October 3, 1990. Reunified Germany has received seven nominations since then, two of which have resulted in a successful win.
- U1 2 : Czechoslovakia was nominated for the first time in 1965 for a Slovak-language film. Its five other nominations, the last of which occurred in 1991, were received for Czech-language films. The formerly Communist country formally split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic on January 1, 1993. Since then, only the Czech Republic has been able to get nominated in the Foreign Language Film category.
- V1 2 3 : Yugoslavia was nominated for the first time in 1958 for an Italian-language film. Its five other nominations, the last of which occurred in 1985, were received for Serbo-Croatian-language films. The formerly Communist country gradually disintegrated at the beginning of the 1990s. Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina are the only post-Yugoslav states to have been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Award.
References
- ^ a b "Special Rules for the Best Foreign Language Film Award". 80th Academy Awards Rules for Distinguished Achievements in 2007. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
- ^ "History of the Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2008-02-12.
- ^ Arnold, William (2007-12-06). "A rare chance to see a legendary - and lengthy - War and Peace". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Seattle: Roger Oglesby. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
{{cite journal}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ a b c d e "80th Academy Awards® Nominations Announced" (Press release). Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 2008-01-22. Retrieved 2008-02-11.
{{cite press release}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Foreign Language Film Facts". Academy Award Statistics. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. last updated in March 2007. Retrieved 2008-02-15.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)
External links
- "The Official Academy Awards Database". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2007-11-14.
- "The Motion Picture Credits Database". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2007-12-11.
- "IMDb Academy Awards Page". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-11-14.
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