Image courtesy NEON
At the same time as we have a President preaching “America First,” that most American of cultural institutions, the Oscars, is going international at a dramatically quickening pace. It’s finally treating foreign language films as every bit as important as ones made by U.S. studios—sometimes even more important.
Looking at this year’s Oscar nominations, which were announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on January 22, two politically edgy and cinematically daring U.S. films dominated overall. Writer director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a beautiful reverie about the power of the blues in the segregated South that takes a sharp turn into a horror movie, led overall with 16 nominations, while director Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is right behind with 13. That film’s title has caught on as a catch phrase, and its story line of American revolutionaries championing immigrants is timely. There are some other strong English language candidates among the 10 Best Picture nominees, including Train Dreams, Hamnet, and Marty Supreme.
Once past those nominees, though, it now seems that ambitious films from around the world will have a strong presence annually in the major category nominations. Two are genuine contenders for the top Best Picture prize this year: Norway’s Sentimental Value, which uses multiple Scandinavian languages as well as some English, and Brazil’s The Secret Agent. Overall, according to Gold Derby writer Christopher Tsang, international films this year received nominations in a record 16 categories. Many are distributed by a low-profile American distributor (New York-based Neon) that’s become a powerful force in presenting foreign films in the U.S. It’s also had success with American indie films, as Anora won the Best Picture Oscar last year.
Beyond that, other Oscar categories that reflect this change include:
- Best Director, where Sentimental Value’s Joachim Trier is a nominee;
- Best Actor nominee Wagner Moura of The Secret Agent;
- Sentimental Value made an impressive showing in the acting categories: Best Actress nominee Renate Reinsve, Best Supporting Actor’s Stellan Skarsgård, and Supporting Actress candidates Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning;
- Two foreign language films are nominees for Best Original Screenplay: Sentimental Value and It Was Just an Accident, submitted to the Oscars by France but a suspenseful Iranian Film that is critical of that nation’s government.
All of this acclaim comes in addition to the Best International Feature Film category, which has increasingly become an important award for American movie enthusiasts, theater bookers, and film distributors. (While the Oscars have had a Best International Feature Film category since 1948, it had been called Best Foreign Language Film until 2020.) This year’s nominees are Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, Spain’s Sirât, and Tunisia’s The Voice of Hind Rajab. According to the Academy’s rules, at least 50 percent of a film’s dialogue must be in a non-English language to qualify for this category.
Image courtesy NEON
The roots of this blossoming of American respect for international films dates to the Academy’s response to the Oscars So White movement of the mid-2010s. “What you’re really seeing now is the long tail of that,” says Debra Birnbaum, Gold Derby’s Editor-in-Chief, in an interview. The Los Angeles-based website, which aims to be the “award show authority with predictions, analysis and news,” is owned by Penske Media. “The Academy made a concerted effort to diversify its voter base and intentional reach out to young, more diverse, and more international members to join its voting body. As a result of that, it’s now over 10,000 members; 25 percent of them are from outside the U.S. That’s a really significant voting base.”
Birnbaum says a key change came in 2020, when Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 South Korean film Parasite became the first foreign language film to win a Best Picture Academy Award. It also won the Best International Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. “I think that was a huge cultural shift,” she says. “It was such a powerful movie, and when it won best picture, that really set a moment to say, ‘You know what, you can get beyond the one inch barrier of subtitles and enjoy a great film.’ ”
This new development comes at interesting times for U.S. movie theaters, which have had their challenges and changes this decade—from COVID forcing extended theater closings to the growth of streaming services offering their own first-run films with expensive production values and top actors and directors. In local news, Cindependent’s Allyson West announced this week that her film-presenting organization has stepped into stewardship of the Mariemont Theatre, guiding its transition to a nonprofit focused on long-term stability and preservation. Cindependent is not buying the theater but will begin programming it in the coming months.
According to a recent New York Times story, while challenges continue for the movie industry, tickets sold in U.S. and Canadian theaters increased by 2 percent in 2025 and habitual theater viewing—defined as people who see at least six films a year in theaters—increased by 8 percent. The increases likely are being driven by additional foreign language movies drawing devoted viewers.
Local audiences will have a number of opportunities in the coming weeks to see foreign language films. The Esquire Theatre in Clifton has Secret Agent as well as the French language A Private Life (starring Jody Foster) and No Other Choice, a South Korean movie made by Park Chan-Wook that has similarities in style and story with Parasite (it was nominated for Best Motion Picture, Best Actor, and Best Non-English Language film at the recent Golden Globes).
Elsewhere, Over-the-Rhine’s Woodward Theater will be screening Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, an Arabic and English language film about those under siege in Gaza, on February 3. Cincinnati World Cinema is screening All That’s Left of You, a drama about a Palestinian family’s struggle with life under Israeli control that was the official submission from Jordan for Academy consideration for a Best Foreign Feature Film Oscar, on February 1.
Image courtesy NEON
CWC will once again have multiple screenings of this year’s nominees for Short Film Oscars in three categories (Live Action, Animated Shorts, and Best Documentary Short) from February 20 through March 15. These films usually include some foreign language titles; this year’s offerings include the absurdist French short Two People Exchanging Saliva.
When Gold Derby’s Birnbaum mentions the “one inch barrier of subtitles,” it’s a reference to a comment made by Bong—in Korean with a translator beside him—when he accepted the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film for Parasite: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many amazing films,” he said.
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