France’s CNC has again overhauled its Academy Awards selection committee protocol following the fallout from last year’s decision not to put forward Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall in the best international feature category, thus extending a 31-year drought since a win.
Anatomy Of A Fall earned five Oscar nominations and won for best original screenplay even though it was not submitted in the best international feature category. Instead the committee chose Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste Of Things in a surprise upset that set the local industry afire with criticism about the choice.
France has not won an Oscar for best international feature since Regis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993 and hasn’t been nominated in the category since Ladj Ly’s Les Miserables in 2020.
The committee will now be comprised of 11 members and five alternates, up from a current seven members. The CNC said the move was made “to promote collegial debate, a diversity of viewpoints and the secrecy of each member’s vote”. Members will be appointed for a two-year term. They are presently appointed for one year only.
The CNC’s president will no longer attend the selection meetings as an observer. Instead, a committee chairman will be appointed from the 11 members, who will have the decisive vote in the event of a tie. However, the president of export body Unifrance will continue to attend the committee meeting as a non-voting observer.
The changes have been made to protect the selection process amid what has been a tumultuous turnover period for both the CNC and the French government. In late June, longtime CNC president Dominique Boutonnat stepped down from his post after being sentenced to a three-year prison sentence for sexual assault. He was replaced by Olivier Henrard, now CNC managing director and acting president.
”These three changes will help reinforce the commission’s independence from both public authorities and professional interests,” said Henrard.
On Sunday (July 7), France will hold a second round of its snap legislative elections that make the fate of the country’s cultural sector uncertain.
The members of the selection committee are traditionally appointed by France’s minister of culture, based on the recommendation of the CNC president. The members must be “qualified in the field of cinema” and, at least half must be “artists and/or craftspeople in the field of motion pictures.”
The selection process itself, however,” remains unchanged,” the CNC confirmed. Eligible films must submit a formal application before July 15. The committee, typically announced in August, will meet twice in September, once to draw up its shortlist of between three and five feature films, then a second time to make its final decision.
This is the third time France has shifted its Oscars selection committee procedure in the past few years. In 2022, it removed voting power from the heads of the Cannes film festival, Unifrance and the César Academy, after a major 2019 overhaul that brought industry professionals into an expanded committee to include directors, producers and sales agents.
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