The Academy concluded that the international appeals executive committee’s deliberations on which three titles to add to the preliminary committee’s seven selections before announcing the shortlist could not be conducted safely online.
Due to concerns over the ability to protect the security of the process by which the Oscar list of best international film finalists is determined, given the pandemic that forces deliberations to take place online, the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided change that process just for this year.
In previous years, the international preliminary feature film committee – a group of volunteers from all branches of the Academy who show films sent from around the world at the Academy’s headquarters in Beverly Hills or at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood – chooses seven of the 10 films that end up appearing on the shortlist. These selections are then confidentially shared by the accounting firm PwC with the international executive committee, which, in turn, adds three other titles to the seven, producing a list of 10. The public is never informed what the committee’s seven choices are and which three are “saved”, so as not to influence the subsequent selection of the five nominees and eventual winner.
This year, however, the process will be different. The Academy decided several months ago to invite all of its Academy members – not just those based in the Los Angeles area near the Academy’s exhibition venues – to ponder during the first phase of the selection process, if they wish, since the pandemic forced all exhibitions to take place through the Academy’s online streaming service.
More recently, The Hollywood Reporter learned, the Academy concluded that conducting the executive committee’s online deliberations through Zoom or a similar platform would leave them vulnerable to leaks or hacks, and decided not to take that risk.
Consequently, this year’s list of finalists will be determined exclusively by the preliminary committee. In addition, in a decision not related to the pandemic, the restricted list will be expanded from 10 to 15 vacancies.
The latter decision may reflect more on the tension felt by some members of the preliminary committee – and shared with The Hollywood Reporter – about having to sift through a record of 93 presentations in less than a month.
Only in early January did the preliminary committee receive its “assignments”. (Committee members are divided into screening groups and asked to make sure they watched a specific group of films submitted, this year totaling 12, after which they can vote to select those or any others.
The counterargument is that they can watch these films at any time before the voting on the shortlist ends on February 5 (it opens on February 1), contrary to the normal process of having to move to the headquarters of Academy at a specific time, at some point over a period of approximately two months, to see your designated films or any others.
The Oscar list for best international feature, and all other lists, will be published on February 9th.