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The International Feature Film Oscar shortlist is due a little less than a month from now. And while it’s again a hotly-contested race, just a slight change this year — which had nothing to do with the eligibility rules — has made headlines. In an era where the Academy is endeavoring to be more inclusive and global, it also has looked to open up the traditional “foreign language” field. But in name only. That’s made more clear by International Feature Film executive committee co-chairs Larry Karaszewski and Diane Weyermann. We recently discussed the state of things.

Deadline: This year, you changed the name of the category from Best Foreign Language Film to Best International Feature Film. What was the impetus?

Larry Karaszewski: We just though the title of the category was a little outmoded. Filmmakers are not foreigners, they’re part of the international filmmaking community. The language is not English,...

This story on Mati Diop, Antoneta Kastrati and the female directors in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category first appeared in the International Film issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.

When Mati Diop first heard questions about gender inequity in the film business, she didn’t know how to react. A mixed-race woman of Senegalese descent raised in Paris from the age of 8 by a strong single mother, she had been directing short films and acting since her early 20s, seldom stopping to consider that her opportunities might be restricted by her gender.

“When people started to talk to me about misogyny, I was like, ‘What is it?'” said Diop, whose haunting feature debut, “Atlantics,” is Senegal’s entry in the Best International Feature Film race. “I think I was in denial.”

Even as she worked on “Atlantics,” Diop said she resisted being a standard-bearer for her gender.

On Monday, after the International Feature Film Oscar committee disqualified the Austrian entry, Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy,” the film’s producer and director went over the film and did their own calculations again. “It was a nasty surprise and quite a shock of course,” said Martin Schweighofer, Executive Director of Austrian Films, who sent a protest letter to the Academy on Thursday signed by Mortezai and producer Oliver Neumann.

According to their math, characters speaking subtitled Bini, German, and Pidgin (which uses different grammar and is not intelligible to English speakers) add up to more than 53 percent.

Clearly the languages flow in and out of each other in a way that is tough to count for everyone involved, but the Academy’s six “testers” –including a Pidgin expert–independently calculated the percentages of the languages in the film and came to the conclusion that the English, even without Pidgin, was...

Austrian sex-trafficking drama was disqualified for having too much English dialogue.

The producer and writer-director of Austria’s contender for the international feature Oscar have hit back at the Academy following the disqualification of their film.

Sudabeh Mortezai’s Joy, which centres on Nigerian sex workers in Vienna, was taken out of the race earlier this week after the Academy’s review process concluded that two-thirds of the dialogue is in English.

But in a letter to the Academy, producer Oliver Neumann of Freibeuter Film and writer-director Mortezai urged the selection committee to reconsider the decision and claimed their “calculation is not correct.

The Academy has bumbled its way into another snafu in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category, disqualifying the Austrian entry, “Joy,” a week after declaring that Nigeria’s “Lionheart” was ineligible.

Like “Lionheart,” “Joy” ran afoul of a rule that states a film must have “a predominantly non-English dialogue track” to compete in the category that until this year was known as Best Foreign Language Film.

“Joy,” which deals with an African woman caught up in sex trafficking in Vienna, is in a mixture of German and English, including a version of pidgin English that is subtitled in the film but understandable to English-speaking viewers.

Also Read: Academy Disqualifies Nigeria's Oscar Entry 'Lionheart'

The Academy ruled that “Joy” was not predominantly non-English, and could therefore not compete in the category. The second disqualification drops the total number of films in the category from 92 to 91, and the total number of...

As the Academy International Feature Film committee continues to vet its 92 entries to check their eligibility, it has determined that yet another contender has violated its rules about the use of the English language. Per the Academy, over two-thirds of Austria’s entry, Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy,” is in English. The committee notified Austria on Monday that the film was disqualified.

Since 2006, the Oscar rules dictate that eligible movies must have a “predominantly non-English dialogue track,” a move made in an attempt to open up more opportunities for films from diverse cultures. This current rule is why Ireland, the U.K., and Australia often submit films to the Academy that are not in English. This year’s Irish entry, “Gaza,” was filmed in Arabic.

This Academy decision follows last week’s controversial disqualification of the first-ever Nigerian entry, Genevieve Njaji’s Netflix pickup “Lionheart,” because it is mostly in the English language.

Austria’s contender for the international feature film Oscar has been disqualified from the race for having too much dialogue in English.

Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy” is the second film to be ruled ineligible to compete for what until this year was known as the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Last week, the disqualification of Nigeria’s “Lionheart” on the same grounds – for being predominantly in English – caused waves among critics who noted that English is one of the country’s official tongues as a result of British colonization.

By coincidence, “Joy” also features a Nigerian character, the eponymous protagonist of the film, a woman working as a prostitute in Vienna to pay off her debt to the sex trafficker who exploits her. The film contains dialogue in a mix of German, English and a pidgin dialect of English.

However, the Academy determined that enough of “Joy’s” dialogue...

Sudabeh Mortezai’s Joy, Austria’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar this year, has been disqualified from the category after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences determined the film did not meet eligibility requirements of a submitted film being predominately in a foreign language.

The film, a drama revolving around the world of Nigerian sex workers in Vienna, mixes Pidgin English and German in its 101-minute run time, but not enough non-English-language dialogue to qualify.

“As we do every year, the Academy is in the process of reviewing the films submitted for the International Feature Film category to determine whether they meet our eligibility rules,” the Academy said in a statement Monday. “The film Joy, submitted by Austria, was just reviewed and is ineligible because only 33% of the dialogue is non-English.”

It becomes the second of the 93 international films submitted to the Oscar category formerly knows...

The Academy has disqualified Nigeria’s “Lionheart” from the Oscar race in the Best International Feature Film category, dropping the number of films competing for the award to 92 from what had been a record 93 entries.

This year’s field is now tied with 2017’s as the largest in the category’s history. Snce “Lionheart” was made by actress-turned-director Genevieve Nnaji, its disqualification drops the number of female directors in this year’s race to 28, which is still a category record.

It was the first film ever submitted to the Oscars by Nigeria.

Also Read: Oscars International Race 2019: Complete List of Films

“Lionheart,” in which Nnaji also stars, is partially in the Igbo language of Nigeria. But it is mostly in English, which violates an Academy rule that entries in the category must have “a predominantly non-English dialogue track.”

The film had not been vetted by the Academy’s International Feature...

The marquee titles at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival will use the platform to launch their fall theatrical releases and generate buzz for their Oscar campaigns, but there are a number of high-profile films that are also looking for distribution. While the market aspect of Tiff isn’t often the biggest news coming out of Toronto, there is a history of impactful acquisitions with films like “The Hurt Locker,” “Jackie,” “I, Tonya,” and “The Wrestler” having sold at previous TIFFs.

This year’s lineup of films up-for-sale certainly has the potential to make similar noise with Xavier Dolan’s “The Death and Life of John F. Donovan,” Mia Hansen-Love’s “Maya,” Brady Corbet’s “Vox Lux,” Errol Morris’s “American Dharma,” and the Telluride hit “Biggest Little Farm” being among the most enticing offerings.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 6 – 16 in Toronto, Canada. Stay up to date...

Netflix has bought worldwide rights to Genevieve Nnaji’s comedy “Lionheart” on the eve of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Netflix announced the deal Friday. The film will premiere at Tiff on Saturday. “Lionheart” marks the first Netflix original film from Nigeria.

Nnaji stars with Nkem Owoh, Pete Edochie, and Onyeka Onwenu. The story follows a daughter who’s forced to work with her feckless uncle in order to save her father’s ailing bus company. Nnaji plays Adaeze, a level-headed executive in her father’s bus company, Lionheart Transport. When her father (played by Edochie) falls ill, both she and her rival (Kalu Egbui Ikeagwu) are passed over in favor of the uncle, played by Owoh.

Complications arise when they discover that the family business is in dire financial straits — leading to absurd results as they try to save the company. The film also touches...