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Is There Any Way to Fix Oscar’s International Film Category?

Or would proposed changes only further empower the international-cinephile class that nominated Emilia Pérez?

If the musical falters — a scenario that appears slightly more plausible now that the Internet has resurfaced hateful and racist tweets from star Karla Sofía Gascón — then one alternative could be The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the protests that gripped Iran in 2022. In a world of international co-productions — The Zone of Interest has five credited production companies, based in three different countries — it may no longer make sense for a film to be identified with one individual nation. (Academy rules state that creative control must have been “largely in the hands of citizens or residents of the submitting country”; the fact that Sacred Fig was co-produced by a German company likely helped as well.)

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