Yahoo Movies The Best Director lineup at the Oscars has a truly international flavor this year
Yorgos Lanthimos. Christopher Nolan. Justine Triet. Jonathan Glazer.
What do these four directors have in common? They were all among the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards, and none of them were born in the United States. Lanthimos is Greek, Triet is French, and Nolan and Glazer are British. Among the nominees, only New Yorker Martin Scorsese is American-born.
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The last time only one American-born director made it to that year’s Best Director lineup was back in 1997, when Miloš Forman (Czech), Scott Hicks (Australian), Mike Leigh and Anthony Minghella (both English) received Oscar nominations. Of course, this is only technically true. Joel Coen was the one American in the category, yet it was due to a guild rule that he received sole credit for directing despite his helming “Fargo” with his brother Ethan, who would’ve been the second American among the nominees.
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The only time the Oscars ever solely nominated directors born overseas was in 1988, when directors from Italy, Sweden, Canada and a pair from the UK competed in the category – with Bernardo Bertolucci eventually winning for “The Last Emperor.” However, on nine occasions, including this year’s ceremony, all but one director were born overseas. It happened four times in the 1960s alone.
Of course, the further back we go, the more directors we’ll find that are known as iconic American filmmakers, but happened to be born in Europe before emigrating West. Such directors to receive multiple nominations include William Wyler (born in Germany), Frank Capra (born in Italy) and Billy Wilder (born in Poland). With this caveat in mind, the most international crop of directors aside from ‘88 came in 1969, when two Italians and two Englishmen competed against none other than Stanley Kubrick.
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As international as these director races may have been, the films helmed by the directors were predominantly in English. Part of what makes this year’s crop so special is that two foreign-language films are being represented in the category by foreign directors. The last time that happened was in 2018, with the nominations of both Alfonso Cuarón (the Mexican director of “Roma”) and Paweł Pawlikowski (Polish director of “Cold War”). The only other occasion when that happened was in 1977, when Ingmar Bergman’s “Face to Face” (Swedish) competed against Lina Wertmüller’s “Seven Beauties” (Italian). This marked the first Oscar nomination for a woman in the Best Director category.
Since 1961 (the first year a foreign-language film received a Best Director nomination), 52% of director lineups have included a foreign-language film. In that same period, only 37% of Best Actress lineups, 15% of Best Actor lineups, 5% of Supporting Actress lineups, and no Supporting Actor lineups featured a foreign-language international film. (This excludes foreign-language performances in American productions.) The directpor category also has more international representation than Best Picture, which has seen less than half the number of international films as Best Director has during the same period.
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Director may be the most international of the Big Four categories, but there are two other categories that highlight international cinema even more thoroughly than does Best Director (excluding International Feature, of course). Fifty-eight percent of Best Documentary Feature lineups since ‘61 have included at least one international film, with recent years more often than not highlighting several international films per lineup. Every documentary in the 2020 ceremony was foreign-language, with “For Sama” being the only one that was at least an American co-production.
Best Original Screenplay also has a strong record, with its haul being 56% since ‘61. The year 1957 was notable for featuring four out of five non-English-language nominees. At one point, Best Original Screenplay ran a bit of an international streak: between 1959 and 1976, every ceremony featured at least one international film (Italian and French films, mostly) in that lineup. One other category worth mentioning is Best Animated Feature. Though it only became a category in the 2003 ceremony, two-thirds of every lineup since have seen a foreign nominee.
Compared to most other categories at the Oscars, Best Director seems to highlight international films at an impressive rate. With the ever-growing voting body of the academy and the increasingly international makeup of the director’s branch, it seems every year that we see a Vinterberg, Hamaguchi, or Östlund slip in among the nominees. This year, we were fortunate enough to get both Justine Triet and Jonathan Glazer to highlight at least two exceptional foreign-language pictures of 2023.
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