The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made changes to the rules and eligibility criteria for the “Oscar” awards in several major categories.
Actors can now be nominated in the same category for different roles — the tweak covers every acting nomination across the board, not just a single subset.
The rules for the “Best International Feature” were reshaped too. Where a country once submitted only one film, the door is now open to non-English language pictures that have taken a qualifying prize at an international festival (e.g., Berlin — Golden Bear; Busan — Best Film Award; Cannes — Palme d’Or; Toronto — Platform Prize; Venice — Golden Lion; Sundance — World Cinema Jury Grand Prize). Also: the statuette will carry the winning director’s name rather than the country’s.
The Academy did not skip the hot topic of artificial intelligence. Performances submitted for acting awards must be “provably performed by humans.” The same human-only requirement extends to screenplay categories: only scripts created by humans will be eligible for consideration.
The 99th Oscar Awards ceremony is slated for March 14, 2027. For reference, this year’s show took place on the night of March 15 to 16.
I’m left wondering how these lines will be policed in practice — curious to see which corner cases surface once submissions start rolling in.