Feature categories like International, Documentary, and Animated and all three shorts categories have their own eligibility rules with Oscar. Visual Effects, Makeup, Song, and Score have bake-offs to narrow things down. But the bulk of Oscar's 24 categories don't have any winnowing process to speak of. The Academy has recently released their annual reminder list of eligible titles which always has a few odd reveals. You can read the full list of 344 features here but here are a four things that stood out to us.
Netflix gave most of their originals one week qualifiers from Velvet Buzzsaw early in the year til Atlantics now
1. Netflix gave almost all their non Best Picture contenders one-week qualifying releases this year, including Velvet Buzzsaw, Always Be My Maybe and Earthquake Bird and the mesmerizing Atlantics ...
2. There are always several narrative features on the lists we've never heard of despite following movies and the showbiz industry all year long and often seeing movies that barely make even $5.00 in movies -- in other words we aren't remotely afraid of seeing obscure titles. But each year we learn you can't keep track of everything. This year those titles we'd never heard of are: "As the Earth Turns" (yes, it's in quotes), Bardo Blues, Children of the Sea, Cuck, Daughter of Mine, Eve n'God This Female Is Not Yet Rated™, The Last, My Stretch of Texas Ground, Pretty Broken, Quezon's Game, and The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. What are these films? Have you heard of them?
Where'd you go Bernadette? You're not even on the list!
3. Sometimes movies we know were released in US theaters don't show up on the list. Why didn't they submit paperwork? Some pictures that apparently weren't concerned with their Oscar eligiblity this year: Gaspar Noe's drug-addled Climax which will surely hit a few top ten lists, The Souvenir which was critically beloved, Where'd You Go Bernadette? which won Cate Blanchett a Globe nomination, future cult favourite Under the Silver Lake, Claire Denis' acclaimed scifi drama High Life, queer foreign indies like Diamantino and End of the Century and award winning foreign titles like The Chambermaid and Long Day's Journey Into Night.
But there's never any rhyme or reason to which titles do or don't bother qualifying with paperwork though, because, like, Sauvage/Wild that explicit French gay prostitution movie WAS submitted for Oscar eligibility so you know... the list is always a curious thing.
4. Titles that were widely considered to belong to the previous year sometimes show up in the current year Oscar eligible list due to varying release patterns from country to country and also sometimes due to qualifying releases cancelled and what not. This year for example Zhang Yimou's brilliant Shadow did actually submit paperwork and is eligible even though it was maybe going to be China's official submission last year (they went with a different film).
Zhang Yimou's exquisite SHADOW is eligible in all categories (but foreign)
The flip side of that coin, though, often stings. Technically speaking films which don't get nominated for Oscar's foreign film race in their submission year are eligible for nominations in all other categories the following year if they aren't released in the US until that following year (See the City of God situation in 2002/2003). But a lot of times the films don't submit once they're actually released figuring they missed their shot. That's true of the genius Icelandic film Woman at War which wasn't released until 2019 but was submitted by Iceland in 2018 and not nominated. Unless of course it did get a very very quiet so quiet we didn't notice one week qualifying release in 2018 And if it did we're very annoyed because we would have included it in our Film Bitch Awards that year. That's just one of the many reasons we hate "qualifying" releases which are a 'letter of the law' game while ignoring the spirit of the law. We've been against them since long before streaming was an issue for The Academy and it wouldn't have been nearly as tricky an issue to navigate if they hadn't allowed qualifying "psyche!... it's not really playing in movie theaters" releases in the first place... which were surely never what the Academy originally intended when planning to honor the movies released in a given year!
The fate that befell Woman at War in 2018/2019 we fear will befall And Then We Danced in 2019/2020 -- i.e. totally brilliant movie gets some attention in its film festival year but Oscar skips it in foreign film. Then the following year when it actually is released adventurous moviegoers realize its brilliant but by then awards bodies have moved on and often the distributor doesn't even bother doing the paperwork to get it eligible for general categories (sigh)
5. Because we like to make fun of the Academy's bizarre generosity to Animated Features (which get wayyyy more nominees than other categories, in relation to how few exist, and also aren't narrowed down before the final nominations like the other specialty "feature" categories) our annual reminder of how crazy the rules are for them.
This year we have 32 eligible animated features so about 16% of them will end up nominated! If 16% of the Best International Feature candidates could be nominated in their category we'd have 14 nominees in that category (and maybe then Oscar could see beyond European filmmaking!) If 16% of all eligible titles were nominated for the top prize at the Oscars we'd have 55 nominees for Best Picture this year. LOLOLOLOL. Animated Features have it so easy!