And the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Hollywood Film goes to…

This paper looks at the diversity in the Academy Award category for Best Foreign Language Film to show how an international process of consecration is still strongly nested in a Western gaze. By studying consecration amongst an international collection of productions, this study adds to previous consecration research focusing mainly on domestic products, and previous cultural flows studies focusing mainly on economic recognition. To do this, a dataset of 2,219 films submitted for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar between 1956-2016 was used. With a multilevel analysis, this paper uncovers which predictors affect the chances of moving from submission to nomination, and subsequently from nomination to winner. Results suggest the existence of a Hollywood bias in the Oscar category, as films directed by a director with previous ties to the industry, or distributed by a distributor with a Hollywood office, have an increased chance of getting nominated. The director-effect also holds up when analyzing the move from nomination to winner. Additionally, this paper argues that submitted films do not benefit from being released prior to the awards, as this negatively affects their probability to end up among the final nominated five films. The study concludes that, while arguing for the category as one purely for non-Hollywood related productions, Hollywood still votes for the relatively familiar productions, challenging the idea that the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film celebrates world cinema.