Exiled Filmmakers Push Back on a Standalone Oscar Category
Two filmmakers who have lived away from their home countries have pushed back on the idea of a separate Oscar category for exiled film-makers. Mohammad Rasoulof and Shahrbanoo Sadat made the point while speaking at the Tokyo International Film Festival, according to Variety.
The Academy, which runs the Oscars, has already changed its rules so that exiled filmmakers can be eligible for the awards. A separate category would be a different route. Rasoulof's film The Seed of the Sacred Fig was nominated in the last Oscar cycle, represented Germany, and was one of the first films to benefit from the eligibility change.
Sadat said she does not like being labelled a displaced filmmaker. She said she is unsure she would want to sit in a displaced category, even if it came with an Oscar.
The discussion took place alongside the Japan premiere of five short films from the Displacement Film Fund, which Cate Blanchett co-founded. The fund took shape at the UN refugee agency's Global Refugee Forum in December 2023. It backs filmmakers who are displaced themselves, or who have a track record of telling authentic stories about displacement. The fund is managed by the Hubert Bals Fund at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, whose managing director is Clare Stewart.
Blanchett has been a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, for more than a decade. She first met Yanai Koji, a director and senior executive officer at Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, at that 2023 forum. The festival's programme page lists UNIQLO as a founding partner of the fund.
The five films in Tokyo include Sadat's Super Afghan Gym and Rasoulof's The Sense of Water. They also include Rotation, a 12-minute Ukrainian-language film from Ukraine and Turkey, directed by Maryna Er Gorbach. Mo Harawe and Hasan Kattan are also among the first-round grant recipients.
The first group of fund films has already had a qualifying screening in Los Angeles for Academy members. Another is set for New York in mid-November. Blanchett was due to attend the Tokyo festival to present the shorts, alongside her work at Dirty Films, the production company she co-founded with Andrew Upton and Coco Francini.
For many viewers, the debate is about a simple question: how should a film from someone far from home be judged? The Academy's rule change answers it one way. The filmmakers in Tokyo suggested the answer should not come with a label attached.
