When the
first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, to honor films released in 1927–28, there was no separate category for foreign language films. Between
1947 and
1955, the Academy presented
Special/Honorary Awards to the best foreign language films released in the United States.[2] These awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no award was given in
1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the
1956 Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.
Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best International Feature Film Award is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winning film's director,[1] but is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. As of 2014[update], the Academy changed its rules so that the name of the director is etched onto the Oscar statuette, in addition to the film's country.[3] The director also gets to keep the statuette.
Over the years, the Best International Feature Film and its predecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the 74 awards handed out by the Academy since
1947 to foreign language films, fifty-seven have gone to
European films,[A] nine to
Asian films,[B] five to
films from the Americas and three to
African films. The late Italian filmmaker
Federico Fellini directed four winning motion pictures during his lifetime, more than any other director. If
Special Awards are taken into account, then Fellini's record is tied by his countryman
Vittorio De Sica. The
Soviet epic War and Peace (1966–67), for its part, is the longest motion picture to have won the Best Foreign Language Film Award. Filmed from 1962 to 1966, it ran for more than seven hours.[4]
Winners and nominees
In the following table, the years are listed as per
Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of
film release; the
ceremonies are always held the following year. Films in bold and dark blue background have received an Academy Award; winning films from 1947 to 1955 won a
Special/Honorary Award as denoted in the key, while all other winning films won a regular Academy Award of Merit.
Films that are neither highlighted nor in bold are the nominees. When sorted chronologically, the table always lists the winning film first and then the four other nominees.
The Submitting country column indicates the country that officially submitted the film to the Academy, and is not necessarily indicative of the film's main country of production. The original titles of the films are also mentioned, as well as the names of the directors and the languages used in the dialogue track, even though none of these elements is officially included in the nomination.
When several languages are used in a film, the predominant one is always listed first; the names of the other languages are written in smaller typesize and placed between brackets. When a film's original title is in a language that uses a non-
Latin script, it is first
transliterated into the Latin alphabet and then written in its original
script.
Films from the former
Yugoslavia are written in both
Latin and
Cyrillic due to the fact that the previously official
Serbo-Croatian language used both alphabets. Chinese film titles are
romanized according to the
pinyin system, and are written using the characters employed in their submitting country, i.e.
traditional Chinese ones for films submitted by Hong Kong and
Taiwan, and
simplified Chinese ones for films submitted by the People's Republic of China.
Since the
79th Academy Awards (2006),[6] a nine-film shortlist has been announced before the nominations, which then has been reduced to the five official nominees. The shortlist was expanded from nine to ten at the
92nd Academy Awards (2019), and from ten to fifteen at the
93rd Academy Awards (2020).
C^ : Shoe-Shine (1946) won a Special Award because "the high quality of this motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a
country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity".[25]
D^ : Monsieur Vincent (1947) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1948.[25]
E^ : Bicycle Thieves (1948) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949.[25]
F^ : The Walls of Malapaga (1949) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States in 1950.[25]
G^ : Rashomon (1950) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.[25]
H^ : Forbidden Games (1952) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1952.[25]
I^ : Gate of Hell (1953) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1954.[25]
J^ : Samurai, The Legend of Musashi (1954) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1955.[25]
L^ : The film received its
1969 nomination under the title My Night with Maud. It had no U.S. distributor at the time. When it was released in
Los Angeles on April 15, 1970, it became eligible for consideration for Academy Awards in other categories, and received a
1970 nomination for
Writing under the title My Night at Maud's. Today, the latter title is the most commonly used when referring to the film in the
English-speaking world.[26]
M^ : Originally released under the title La Victoire en chantant, the film was reissued in France under the title Noirs et Blancs en couleur (a literal French translation of its English title Black and White in Color) following its
1976 Academy Award win.[27]
N^ : Although films produced inside the United States are not eligible for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Film Award,[1] those produced in
U.S. overseas possessions were eligible at the time.
Puerto Rico, an
unincorporated territory of the United States, was thus able to receive a nomination for What Happened to Santiago (1989).[28] However, this rule was changed in 2011 barring Puerto Rican submissions.[29]
O^ : This is not an official nomination. After the nominations were announced, information came to light that showed this film was wholly produced in
Argentina, and had insufficient Uruguayan artistic control. The film was declared ineligible and removed from the final ballot.[30]
When the
first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, to honor films released in 1927–28, there was no separate category for foreign language films. Between
1947 and
1955, the Academy presented
Special/Honorary Awards to the best foreign language films released in the United States.[2] These awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no award was given in
1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the
1956 Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.
Unlike other Academy Awards, the Best International Feature Film Award is not presented to a specific individual. It is accepted by the winning film's director,[1] but is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. As of 2014[update], the Academy changed its rules so that the name of the director is etched onto the Oscar statuette, in addition to the film's country.[3] The director also gets to keep the statuette.
Over the years, the Best International Feature Film and its predecessors have been given almost exclusively to European films: out of the 74 awards handed out by the Academy since
1947 to foreign language films, fifty-seven have gone to
European films,[A] nine to
Asian films,[B] five to
films from the Americas and three to
African films. The late Italian filmmaker
Federico Fellini directed four winning motion pictures during his lifetime, more than any other director. If
Special Awards are taken into account, then Fellini's record is tied by his countryman
Vittorio De Sica. The
Soviet epic War and Peace (1966–67), for its part, is the longest motion picture to have won the Best Foreign Language Film Award. Filmed from 1962 to 1966, it ran for more than seven hours.[4]
Winners and nominees
In the following table, the years are listed as per
Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of
film release; the
ceremonies are always held the following year. Films in bold and dark blue background have received an Academy Award; winning films from 1947 to 1955 won a
Special/Honorary Award as denoted in the key, while all other winning films won a regular Academy Award of Merit.
Films that are neither highlighted nor in bold are the nominees. When sorted chronologically, the table always lists the winning film first and then the four other nominees.
The Submitting country column indicates the country that officially submitted the film to the Academy, and is not necessarily indicative of the film's main country of production. The original titles of the films are also mentioned, as well as the names of the directors and the languages used in the dialogue track, even though none of these elements is officially included in the nomination.
When several languages are used in a film, the predominant one is always listed first; the names of the other languages are written in smaller typesize and placed between brackets. When a film's original title is in a language that uses a non-
Latin script, it is first
transliterated into the Latin alphabet and then written in its original
script.
Films from the former
Yugoslavia are written in both
Latin and
Cyrillic due to the fact that the previously official
Serbo-Croatian language used both alphabets. Chinese film titles are
romanized according to the
pinyin system, and are written using the characters employed in their submitting country, i.e.
traditional Chinese ones for films submitted by Hong Kong and
Taiwan, and
simplified Chinese ones for films submitted by the People's Republic of China.
Since the
79th Academy Awards (2006),[6] a nine-film shortlist has been announced before the nominations, which then has been reduced to the five official nominees. The shortlist was expanded from nine to ten at the
92nd Academy Awards (2019), and from ten to fifteen at the
93rd Academy Awards (2020).
C^ : Shoe-Shine (1946) won a Special Award because "the high quality of this motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a
country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity".[25]
D^ : Monsieur Vincent (1947) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1948.[25]
E^ : Bicycle Thieves (1948) won a Special Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Academy Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1949.[25]
F^ : The Walls of Malapaga (1949) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States in 1950.[25]
G^ : Rashomon (1950) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was voted by the
Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.[25]
H^ : Forbidden Games (1952) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1952.[25]
I^ : Gate of Hell (1953) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1954.[25]
J^ : Samurai, The Legend of Musashi (1954) won an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award. It was named Best Foreign Language Film first released in the United States during 1955.[25]
L^ : The film received its
1969 nomination under the title My Night with Maud. It had no U.S. distributor at the time. When it was released in
Los Angeles on April 15, 1970, it became eligible for consideration for Academy Awards in other categories, and received a
1970 nomination for
Writing under the title My Night at Maud's. Today, the latter title is the most commonly used when referring to the film in the
English-speaking world.[26]
M^ : Originally released under the title La Victoire en chantant, the film was reissued in France under the title Noirs et Blancs en couleur (a literal French translation of its English title Black and White in Color) following its
1976 Academy Award win.[27]
N^ : Although films produced inside the United States are not eligible for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Film Award,[1] those produced in
U.S. overseas possessions were eligible at the time.
Puerto Rico, an
unincorporated territory of the United States, was thus able to receive a nomination for What Happened to Santiago (1989).[28] However, this rule was changed in 2011 barring Puerto Rican submissions.[29]
O^ : This is not an official nomination. After the nominations were announced, information came to light that showed this film was wholly produced in
Argentina, and had insufficient Uruguayan artistic control. The film was declared ineligible and removed from the final ballot.[30]