Lost in Translation: Second-Guessing the Academy's Foreign Language Picks

It's no secret: The Academy makes some strange choices

He's got a secret

Finally arriving in American theaters this weekend, The Secret in Their Eyes 76 (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) is an exhilarating (or perplexing, depending on the reviewer) blend of mystery, suspense, romance, politics, and even a bit of comedy. The Argentinean film is also the most recent Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film. But Secret is not the best-reviewed foreign film of the past year. In fact, it's not even the most acclaimed release of the five nominees who competed for this year's Oscar. As we shall see in a moment, this year is not an aberration; the Academy and film critics rarely agree on the year's best film import.

First, some data. Here is how the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film has compared to other key releases over the past decade. Note that the comparisons only involve other nominees or other films that were officially submitted for Oscar consideration; for reasons that we shall get to in a minute, many worthy foreign films do not even qualify to be nominated.

* At least one nominee that year did not receive scores due to a very limited or no American theatrical release.
Note that the years listed are the years that films were released in their home countries and submitted for consideration, although due to Academy deadlines, the original release doesn't exactly correspond to a calendar year. The actual Oscars were then awarded the following year. For example, "2009" refers to films that qualified during 2009 and were recognized at the 2010 awards ceremony. Also note that not all submitted films have Metascores, since many were never released theatrically in the United States. The Metascore is a weighted average of scores from top professional critics, on a scale from 0 (bad) to 100 (good). User scores represent an average of scores assigned by Metacritic.com site visitors on a scale from 0 (bad) to 10 (good).

As you can see, you have to go back to the year 2000 to find an Oscar-winning foreign film that was also the best-reviewed movie out of all films submitted to the Academy for consideration. In fact, in five of the past eight years, at least 10 of the submitted films have received better reviews than the eventual winner. Even if you focus only on the nominated films, the last time that the Oscar winner scored higher with critics than its fellow nominees was in 2001.

So if the Academy voters aren't selecting the most critically-acclaimed films, what exactly are they picking? The most accessible films? That doesn't appear to be the case, either. As you can see above, the Academy's selections rarely coincide with Metacritic user preferences. And, more surprisingly -- given that an Oscar victory presumably provides some sort of box office bump -- the Oscar-winning foreign film more often than not performs more poorly in U.S. theaters than at least one other nominee. Apparently, the only people who agree with Academy voters are ... Academy voters.

Perhaps the Academy is aiming for geographic diversity. There is only one country to repeat as a winner over the past decade: Germany, winning for films released in 2002 and 2006. Another reason might be that the winning selections reflect the tastes of people with a lot of time on their hands. After all, those Academy members who do vote on foreign-language films have their work cut out for them: not only must they see up to five dozen films, but they must do so in a theater, since the Academy does not allow voters to view foreign films at home on DVD (as it does for Best Picture). But you can't just blame the voters; thanks to the Academy's arcane rules, many would-be contenders are never even submitted.

It's an honor merely to qualify

As we hinted earlier, many worthy foreign-language films don't even meet the Academy's qualification requirements, and thus cannot even receive a nomination. The much-discussed and much-disliked eligibility rules require films to be non-American in origin, and spoken mostly in a language other than English. Those basic requirements are the easy ones (though at least one foreign film has still been disqualified for having too much English dialogue, and an American film like the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima cannot get a nomination). But it gets more difficult from there.

If too many of the film's crew members aren't residents of the submitting country? Disqualified. (It happened to Ang Lee's Lust, Caution in 2007.) If the film is in a foreign language, but not the language commonly spoken in the submitting country? Disqualified. (It happened to Michael Haneke's French-language but Austria-submitted Cache in 2005, but that bizarre rule has since been eliminated.) If the film aired first (even if in a different version) on TV or the internet? Disqualified.

The most onerous rule of all, though, is the requirement that there can be only one submission per country per year. If there should happen to be, say, two phenomenal French movies in one calendar year (hey, it could happen), only one of them can even be eligible to be nominated. And which film gets submitted by each country? One that is selected according to each country's own rules in a process that is frequently marred by politics, criticism and controversy. Heck, even the definition of "country" has come under fire. (Hong Kong? It qualifies. Puerto Rico? Yes, even though it's hardly non-American. Palestine? Nope -- most of the time.)

Here are some notable foreign-language films from the past decade that, for one reason or another, were not submitted to the Academy for consideration.

Recent Notable Foreign Language Films Not Submitted for Oscar Consideration

Film	U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
Yi Yi: A One and a Two	2000	92	8.2	$1.1 million
35 Shots of Rum	2009	92	5.9
Werckmeister Harmonies	2001	92	6.9
Moolaadé	2004	91	7.0
Beau Travail	2000	91	7.5
The Best of Youth	2005	89	9.2
Still Walking	2009	89	9.1
Y tu mamá también	2002	88	7.8	13.8
Time Out	2002	88	7.2
Maria Full of Grace	2004	87	8.3	6.5
Talk to Her	2002	86	8.4	9.3
The Wind Will Carry Us	2000	86	8.2
To Be and To Have	2003	86	9.4	0.8
I'm Going Home	2002	86	7.0
Ten	2003	86	8.3
The Beaches of Agnes	2009	86	6.5
Russian Ark	2002	86	7.1	3.0
Under the Sand	2001	86	8.7	1.5
Tell No One	2008	82	7.7	6.2
Kung Fu Hustle	2005	78	8.9	17.1
Monsoon Wedding	2002	77	7.9	13.9
A Very Long Engagement	2004	76	8.0	6.5
The Motorcycle Diaries	2004	75	7.7	16.8
Jet Li's Fearless	2006	70	8.6	24.6

Box office grosses are in millions of dollars and reflect domestic receipts only. Omitted grosses were under $500,000. Source for box office figures: Box Office Mojo.

What the Academy picked, and what was overlooked

Now, let's look at the films that were indeed submitted for consideration over the past decade. What films earned nominations, what films won, and which acclaimed movies did the Academy completely overlook?

In each table below, the Oscar winner is highlighted in gold.

2009 Foreign Language Film Submissions (82nd Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	A Prophet	2010	90	9.0	$1.7 million
2	Ajami	2010	82	9.5	0.5
3	The White Ribbon	2009	82	8.4	2.1
4	The Secret in Their Eyes	2010	76	n/a	n/a
	The Milk of Sorrow	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
Police, Adjective		2009	81	5.3
Mother [2009]		2009	79	8.8
Afghan Star		2009	78	10.0
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Terribly Happy		2010	74	8.3

Box office grosses are in millions of dollars and reflect domestic receipts only. Source for box office figures: Box Office Mojo.

Note that the list of last year's acclaimed foreign films that were not even submitted for Oscar consideration includes 35 Shots of Rum 92, Still Walking 89, Summer Hours 84 and The Headless Woman 80, all of which scored higher with critics than winner The Secret in Their Eyes 76.

2008 Foreign Language Film Submissions (81st Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	The Class	2008	92	6.9	3.8
2	Waltz with Bashir	2008	91	8.0	2.3
3	Revanche	2009	84	8.4	0.2
4	The Baader Meinhof Complex	2009	76	7.9	0.5
5	Departures	2009	68	7.7	1.5
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
Tulpan		2009	88	6.0
Gomorrah		2009	87	5.7	1.6
Everlasting Moments		2009	80	8.2
O'Horten		2009	78	7.2
The Song of Sparrows		2009	74	n/a
Three Monkeys		2009	73	9.0
Tony Manero		2009	72	5.6

2007 Foreign Language Film Submissions (80th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Katyn	2009	81	8.7	0.1
2	The Counterfeiters	2008	78	8.1	5.5
3	Mongol	2008	74	7.6	5.7
4	12	2009	72	6.5	0.1
	Beaufort	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.1
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days		2008	97	7.9
Persepolis		2007	90	8.1
The Edge of Heaven		2008	85	8.7
Taxidermia		2009	83	8.5
Silent Light		2009	79	7.5
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Jar City		2008	75	8.0
The Orphanage		2007	74	8.5	7.2
Exiled		2007	73	6.6
I Served the King of England		2008	72	8.4

2006 Foreign Language Film Submissions (79th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Pan's Labyrinth	2006	98	8.3	37.6
2	The Lives of Others	2006	89	9.0	11.3
3	Days of Glory	2006	82	7.7	0.3
4	After the Wedding	2007	78	8.5	1.5
5	Water	2006	77	6.7	5.5
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
[None.]
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Volver		2006	84	8.8	12.9
Ten Canoes		2007	82	7.4
Reprise		2008	79	7.0

2005 Foreign Language Film Submissions (78th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Sophie Scholl – The Final Days	2006	76	9.2	0.7
2	Paradise Now	2005	71	8.4	1.5
3	Tsotsi	2006	70	8.0	2.9
4	Joyeux Noël	2006	70	8.7	1.1
5	Don't Tell	2006	52	8.0	0
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
L'Enfant (The Child)		2006	87	8.4	0.7
Fateless		2006	87	8.4
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu		2006	84	8.1
Cache (Hidden) *		2005	83	6.0	3.6
C.R.A.Z.Y.		2007	81	9.5
The Italian		2007	74	7.6
The Cave of the Yellow Dog		2006	73	8.3
Buffalo Boy		2005	72	8.2

* Cache was later disqualified because it was in a language not native to the submitting country.

2004 Foreign Language Film Submissions (77th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Downfall	2005	82	8.6	5.5
2	The Sea Inside	2004	74	8.8	2.1
3	The Chorus	2005	56	9.2	3.6
	As It Is in Heaven	n/a	n/a	n/a	0
	Yesterday	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
House of Flying Daggers		2004	89	7.7	11.1
Nobody Knows		2005	88	9.0	0.7
Turtles Can Fly		2005	85	9.4
The Five Obstructions		2004	79	6.4
Up and Down		2005	78	7.0
Far Side of the Moon		2005	76	9.0
Machuca		2005	76	9.7
The Keys to the House		2004	74	7.5
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Memory of a Killer		2005	73	8.3
Kontroll		2005	72	9.1
Lost Embrace		2005	70	7.5

2003 Foreign Language Film Submissions (76th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	The Twilight Samurai	2004	82	9.0	0.6
2	The Barbarian Invasions	2003	71	7.5	8.5
3	Zelary	2004	66	8.1	0.3
4	Evil	2006	61	8.1	0
	Twin Sisters	n/a	n/a	n/a	0
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring		2004	85	8.1	2.4
Distant		2004	84	6.9
Osama		2004	83	7.2	1.3
The Return		2004	82	8.1
Goodbye Dragon Inn		2004	82	5.3
The Story of the Weeping Camel		2004	81	9.1	1.8
Infernal Affairs		2004	75	9.4
Kitchen Stories		2004	75	8.3
A Talking Picture		2004	75	5.7
Divine Intervention		2003	74	7.0
I'm Not Scared		2004	73	8.4
Last Life in the Universe		2004	73	8.0
Carandiru		2004	71	7.7

2002 Foreign Language Film Submissions (75th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Hero	2004	84	7.0	53.7
2	The Man Without a Past	2003	84	8.1	0.9
3	Nowhere in Africa	2003	72	8.8	6.2
4	The Crime of Father Amaro	2002	60	8.0	5.7
5	Zus & Zo	2003	50	6.0	0
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
The Son		2003	86	7.5
Lilya 4-Ever		2003	82	9.3
City of God		2003	79	8.7	7.6
Hukkle		2003	79	8.8
Oasis		2004	79	8.2
Open Hearts		2003	77	8.8
The Clay Bird		2004	75	10.0
Broken Wings		2004	75	8.0

2001 Foreign Language Film Submissions (74th Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	No Man's Land	2001	84	8.5	1.0
2	Lagaan	2002	84	9.1	0.9
3	Elling	2002	70	9.5	0.3
4	Amélie	2001	69	8.6	33.2
5	Son of the Bride	2002	68	9.5	0.6
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
The Fast Runner		2002	91	7.8	3.8
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Late Marriage		2002	82	7.2	1.7
The Piano Teacher		2002	79	7.8	1.0
Baran		2001	79	9.3
Italian for Beginners		2002	77	9.8	4.5
Perfume de Violetas		2004	74	10.0
Behind the Sun		2001	73	7.6
Our Lady of the Assassins		2001	73	8.2	0.5
The Son's Room		2002	73	9.2	1.0

2000 Foreign Language Film Submissions (73rd Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon	2000	93	7.0	128.1*
2	Amores Perros	2001	83	9.3	5.4
3	The Taste of Others	2001	78	6.8	0.9
4	Divided We Fall	2001	69	9.7	1.3
5	Everybody Famous!	2001	60	n/a	0.1
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
[None.]
Other notable films among the official submissions:
In the Mood for Love		2001	85	8.7	2.7
Chunhyang		2000	79	8.8	0.8
A Time for Drunken Horses		2000	78	10.0	0.6
Songs from the Second Floor		2002	74	7.3
The Vertical Ray of the Sun		2001	72	9.3

* Bar graph for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon domestic gross not to scale due to space limitations.

1999 Foreign Language Film Submissions (72nd Academy Awards)

The Nominees		U.S. Release	Metascore	User Score	U.S. Box Office Gross
1	All About My Mother	1999	87	9.6	8.3
2	Himalaya [aka Caravan]	2001	73	8.9	2.5
3	East-West	2000	61	9.0	2.3
4	Under the Sun	2001	60	8.8	0.3
5	Solomon and Gaenor	2000	58	8.3	0.2
Submitted films that weren't nominated but scored higher than the winner:
[None.]
Other notable films among the official submissions:
Set Me Free		2000	80	9.2
Rosetta		1999	76	9.0
Aimee & Jaguar		2000	72	9.7	0.9
Earth [1999]		1999	71	9.2

Is it all Greek to you?

How do you feel about the Academy's foreign language picks over the past decade? Are there foreign films that you enjoyed that you feel should have been recognized by the Academy? Let us know in the comments section below.