"Goddamned Asura" to represent Taiwan at the Oscars
Monday, August 15, 2022 at 3:48PM 
We have our fourth contestant in the annual Oscar games for international cinema. If you missed the first three those were here.
🇹🇼 GODDAMNED ASURA
Taiwan (3 nominations, 1 win, and 2 additional finalists from 48 submissions)
The film is about a young man who orders a gun online and fires into a crowd on his 18th birthday. The film reportedly has an ambitious structure, shifting from virtual gaming to reality and following six different people who will be affected by the shooting. This film was inspired by a true story in 2014 which has inspired other films before this as well since gun violence is rare in Taiwan...
The meaning of "Asura" has changed over the years but now generally means "demon". Joseph Huang plays the young man with the gun. Some of you may remember him as the protagonist of the very enjoyable Taiwanese Oscar submission Dear Ex (2018), streaming on Netflix, which was about a young boy living with his widowed mother who befriends his dead closeted father's boyfriend against her wishes.
Last year at the Golden Horse Awards, the top champion was the 2021 Oscar submission The Falls. Goddamned Asura won Best Supporting Actress (Wang Yu-xuan) and was also nominated for Best Screenplay and Best New Actor (Devin Pan). (IMDb strangely only lists a teeny-tiny portion of these awards and makes no mention of this movie's nominations. We publish the full list each year as it's available on the Golden Horse website).
As for why Goddamned Asura is eligible for submission this year, we're not exactly sure. We assume it's because it didn't have its general release until March of 2022 but it still seems strange to have won awards in November of 2021 and still be eligible in 2022 (The Oscar calendar this year for this category is January 1st-November 30th releases abroad). Then again these things are often murky since Oscar's calendar changes and has been especially wobbly since COVID. What's more it never lined up exactly with the calendar year anyway (in this category) and has, of course, never lined up with other countries very different awards show calendars.
Updated Oscar Charts
Pg 1 - Albania through Greece
Pg 2 - Haiti through Norway
Pg 3 - Palestine through Vietnam
Current Predictions
P.S. Interestingly enough, this means the upcoming nominations for the 2022 Golden Horse Awards (September 27th) won't give us any clues as to what Taiwan is selecting since they have already done so! Perhaps one of 2022's nominees will wait to be released at home until 2023 and submit at this time next year?
Reader Comments (1)
I always found it interesting that the films Taiwan submit for Academy Award consideration aren't always the same films that find the greatest success in the Golden Horse festival.