Oscars: Every Non-English Language Movie Nominated For Best Picture
The Academy Awards have long given unjust preference to American films, despite the extraordinary work that artists from other nations have often produced. As a result, non-English language films have generally been relegated to the international Feature Film category (formerly known as the Best Foreign Language Film category) and thereby been given far less public attention than their quality often calls for.
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A select number of non-English language productions have managed to overcome this bias and receive nominations for Best Picture, with one breaking decades of precedent by receiving the award.
The first non-English language film to be nominated for the Best Picture award and one of the best foreign war films, the 1937 French production The Grand Illusion analyzed the consequences of World War 1 with enough insight and artistic deftness to be recognized by the Academy at a time in which only English language films had received the ceremony's most prestigious nomination.
French filmmakers produced much of the most notable and innovative cinema of the twentieth century, and the Academy's recognition of The Grand Illusion helped to foster their reputation for cinematic exceptionalism.
This Costa Gavras-directed film earned its Best Picture nomination by fictionalizing the assassination of a Greek political figure with a level of precision and conscientiousness that American films often lack in comparison to French productions.
Americans' continued grief concerning the then-recent assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy likely heightened their interest in the material presented in Z, thus encouraging the Academy to nominate a foreign film for an award that had never been presented to a non-English language picture.
While French cinema has long been the dominant non-American film market, Swedish director Jan Troell managed to secure international recognition with his 1971 film The Emigrants, starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, and Eddie Axberg.
An adaptation of a series of novels, this film chronicles Swedish emigrants to the United States and notes the distinct hardships that such individuals endured during their cross-Atlantic expedition. As the vast majority of Americans descend from immigrants, the Academy was likely more enraptured by this film than by the majority of non-English language works, and it provided the piece with high recognition as a result.
This piece by Ingmar Bergman - a legendary figure in the eyes of cinephiles and one of the European directors every movie fan needs to check out - maintained the elevated status that Swedish cinema had enjoyed the previous year with the release of The Emigrants. Bergman's iconic writing and directing ability rendered Cries and Whispers a film too polished and challenging for the Academy to overlook, and it became the fourth non-English language film to be nominated for Best Picture as a result.
Films that provide underrepresented perspectives - such as this one, which starred three women at a time when Hollywood was overwhelmingly male-dominated - are welcomed additions to the film canon, and Cries and Whispers' recognition at the Academy Awards reaffirmed critics' appreciation of such works.
The 1994 film Il Postino: The Postman drew from various cultures to produce an exceptional piece that was esteemed by the Academy. The film incorporates both the Italian and Spanish languages, and its director, Michael Radford, was English - a combination of nationalities unusual in any creative setting.
The film's star, Italian actor Massimo Troisi, tragically passed away as a result of a heart attack shortly after production concluded, but his role in this film is widely regarded as a fitting capstone to his film career.
Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni directed and co-wrote this World War II epic in part by drawing from his father's experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. It received a level of attention and acclaim that is unusual on an international level, with many appreciating Benigni's skilled handling of incredibly dark and exceptionally sensitive subject matter.
While the specific topic and setting of Life Is Beautiful are specific to Europe, the themes of familial love and fear of loss are universal enough to render the film appealing and relatable to global audiences.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - which featured stars from various nations who were all ethnically Chinese - was the first Mandarin language film to be nominated for Best Picture, and its critical reputation as one of the most culturally influential movies of the 2000s was matched by a level of commercial success that was unprecedented for a non-English language film at the time.
The film's unabashed focus on Chinese history and culture proved to be endearing to international critics and audiences rather than offputting, thus allowing many future productions that focused on diverse cultures to be funded and produced.
Nearly a decade before securing international prominence with the English language films Birdman and The Revenant, Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu dazzled critics with Babel, a film which featured several languages and was filmed and set in multiple countries.
The film's polished writing, direction, and acting endeared it to the Academy and garnered it a Best Picture nomination despite the language barrier that normally prevented international films from receiving the honor. Iñárritu's confidence in the material and his pride in his Mexican heritage allowed for Babel's phenomenal critical and commercial success.
This Clint Eastwood-directed piece, which is predominantly Japanese language and features a Japanese cast, offers that nation's perspective of the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima. Americans have historically been largely unsympathetic to the Japanese forces of the second World War, but this film challenged those biases deftly enough that the Academy awarded the film with a nomination for Best Picture.
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One of cinema's greatest assets is its ability to challenge preconceived notions and alter perspectives, and the Academy believed that Letters from Iwo Jima served those functions effectively.
Amour returned French language films to prominence in the United States, being the first to receive a Best Picture nomination in decades. Its depiction of elderly love is relatively uncommon in popular media, and the effectiveness with which it portrayed such a relationship earned it international recognition.
The Academy is often partial to powerful if largely-humorless emotional sagas, and French cinema's specialty in such works has occasionally garnered it high-profile recognition, with Amour's nomination at the 85th Academy Awards being one of the more notable instances.
Alfonso Cuarón had long proven himself as a capable and daring filmmaker by the time Roma was released in 2018 - having served as the creative force behind films such as Children of Men and Gravity - but this Netflix production is possibly his most emotionally striking work to date, with its use of Cuarón's native Spanish not impeding its success to any significant degree.
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The overwhelming majority of critics - regardless of whether or not they served in the Academy - appreciated the film's outstanding treatment of familial relations and its incorporation of universal themes.
This 2019 South Korean thriller - which is one of the most popular Best Picture nominees in Academy Awards history - showcased the phenomenal talents of director and co-writer Bong Joon-ho by highlighting the injustices of income inequality with both earnestness and humor. The film became the first non-English language work to receive the Academy Award for Best Picture, defying the Western dominance of the film industry's most prestigious and respected award ceremony.
Parasite's success will ideally draw Americans' attention to foreign films which they may have previously overlooked - and the successive nominations of non-English language films for Best Picture at the following two Academy Awards ceremonies serve as an indication that this may be the case.
This film about South Korean immigrants to the United States, which incorporates both the Korean and English languages, exposed non-immigrant Americans to the discomfort and alienation felt by those who relocate to distant countries of which they are unfamiliar with the customs and culture.
Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung incorporated his own immigrant experience into the film, making for a personal and realistic work which serves to educate native-born Americans about the hardships that immigrants endure during the relocation process, and ideally make them more sympathetic to the immigrant plight.
This Japanese film incorporates multiple international languages in addition to its native one as it follows a grieving theater director during the preparation process of a Chekov play. This was the first Best Picture nomination for a Japanese language film since Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima more than a decade prior, and its humane depiction of loss cemented it as one of the greatest films of the decade so far.
Auteurs such as Drive My Car's director and co-writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi are able to transcend cultural differences by appealing to the most universal of emotions.