The academy of Motion Pictures has rejected a second film for next year’s Oscars award for Best International Films as the committee continues to scrutinize its entries in a bid to stamp out any ineligibility.
The movie in question is “Joy”, Austria’s Oscar entry. The film was written and directed by Austrian filmmaker Sudabeh Mortezai, and it’s about Nigerian sex workers in Vienna, the capital city of Austria.
According to Hollywood Reporter, the Academy’s reason for the disqualification is because over 50 percent of Austria’s entry, Sudabeh Mortezai’s “Joy” is in English. Just as it was with Lionheart, the disqualification of ‘Joy’ is still based on the best international feature category, which states that its dialogue must not be predominantly in English, which it falls short of.
“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 film Joy, submitted by Austria, was just reviewed and is ineligible because only 33% of the dialogue is non-English,” the statement says.
Renowned film director Ava DuVernay has
faulted the Academy’s decision as she did with Lionheart:
These rejections come in the year when the
Academy re-named the Best Foreign
Language Film Oscar award to Best
International Film for “films that are not in the English language”.
