The rule change allowing select festival winners to qualify for the international feature film Oscar category will have a wide impact on the global filmmaking community, a TIFF panel heard on Friday.
“The international Oscar definitely changes lives,” said Guneet Monga Kapoor, who in 2023 became the first Indian producer win an Academy Award with the documentary short The Elephant Whisperers. “On a global stage where the whole world is watching it changes careers, it rockets careers.”
Kapoor told an audience at the Perspectives Academy Conversation: International Feature Film panel: “I was in that meeting on the executive committee and we had smiles frozen on our faces [when the rule change was discussed]. It’s very important for [India] because there’s a pathway. India has been making films for 113 years and […] we have had brilliant filmmakers and the pathway to show our films has been difficult to navigate.”
Michèle Ohayon, who directed the Oscar- and DGA-nominated documentary Colors Straight Up and is co-chair of the Academy’s executive committee for international feature films, said: “Smaller films that may not have a big budget and PR machines behind them now can also be seen through festivals.”
The Academy’s rule change announced earlier this year allows non-English-language winners of the top prizes at TIFF (Platform), Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, and Busan to be eligible in the international film category. In these cases the films’ producers submit as an alternative route to the national selection committee picks.
“We wanted to give opportunities to films that could be overlooked with the one-country one-film submission,” Ohayon told session moderator Lynette Howell Taylor, who is the Academy president and founder of 51 Entertainment. “Through the festivals we can see the best and the brightest and gives us another window; it lets the films come and submit.”
Ohayon continued, “Selection committees can only submit one film and sometimes if someone makes a controversial film it may never be submitted by the selection committee, so we wanted to give an opportunity for those filmmakers to submit.”
“For example All We Imagine Is Light was at Cannes [in 2024] and was picked up by a US distributor and was a beautiful film and was not nominated,” said Kapoor. “At least there is another window. It’s a great start.”
Winning the Oscar, Kapoor said, “changed my life”. She concluded, “It means it will be maybe a little easier to make your next film.”
Screen is a media partner on Perspectives.
No comments yet