greece's "oscar-winning" selection sparked controversy, with most films choosing to give up their eligibility
2024-09-25
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there is still one week left before the submission of best international film for the 97th academy awards will come to an end - specifically, at 5:00 pm eastern time on october 2. as of press time, more than 60 countries or regions have submitted films. in recent years, there are generally about 90 films submitted each year. i believe that in the next week, more films will continue to participate in the "oscar competition".
however, the most talked-about event in the oscar best international film submission this year occurred last week, when greece submitted the film murderess. the controversy is that, generally speaking, the films submitted by each country or region will be selected from a number of candidate films by the local government organization responsible for film, but greece only has this one candidate this year. in other words, whether it is selected or not, it is the only one.
the murderer poster
the process that led to such an abnormal result can almost be described as a scandal. in early august, the greek ministry of culture had invited some of the country's film professionals to form a seven-member selection committee, including director vasilis kekatos, who won the cannes best short film award five years ago, actress kora karvounis and screenwriter kallia papadakis, who had collaborated on the film "september burials are not suitable", and film critic leda galanou. kekatos also received an email stating that he would serve as the chairman of the selection committee. however, just two days later, the four received new emails from the ministry of culture, explaining that there was an "error" in the work and that the members of the selection committee were "not yet finalized."
soon, the greek ministry of culture announced another list of seven people, including evan spiliotopoulos, a greek screenwriter who has been active in hollywood for a long time, asimina proedrou, a director whose work "after haystack" once represented greece in the oscars, screenwriter christina lazaridis, animation director panagiotis rappas, director spyros taravira, actor vassilis charalampopoulos and film critic dimitris danikas. obviously, none of the four people who received the initial invitation were on the list.
the ministry of culture's reversal of its promise triggered a huge backlash in the greek film industry. soon, 22 of the 23 greek films that had registered for the oscars announced that they would withdraw their entries, leaving only one, the murderer, who did not follow the crowd and thus won the qualification to represent greece in the oscars without any suspense.
in an open letter to the ministry of culture, the producers and directors of the 22 films angrily stated that the ministry of culture's "artificial intervention" in the selection committee "seriously casts doubt on the credibility of the selection process, so we refuse to cooperate with such opaque practices because these practices have damaged the reputation of greek films and greek filmmakers. we have no choice but to decide to withdraw the films."
on the other hand, the hellenic film institute, a semi-official organization representing the interests of greek filmmakers, also clearly opposed the government's approach. the institute was only established in 2009, and its main focus is to oppose government intervention and demand a new line for greek films that is free to create films. it was also in 2009 that the greek national film awards, which had been held by the government for many years, came to an end and were replaced by the hellenic film academy awards, which are managed and operated by filmmakers themselves. in recent years, the hellenic film institute has been responsible for submitting a list of recommended films to the ministry of culture on the eve of the oscar for best international film. however, the final right to select films is still firmly in the hands of the committee selected by the ministry of culture.
this time, in response to the controversial move by the ministry of culture, the head of the greek film academy, lefteris charitos, simply called for the future selection of films to be decided by the more than 600 members of the academy, and not to allow the ministry of culture to make small moves. as for this year's oscars, charitos believes that greece should not submit any more films; after all, there is only one candidate left, which is not decent in any way.
amid the chaos, iason fotilas, the greek deputy minister of culture, who had only been in office for a few months, finally made a public response. he put all the blame on an unnamed subordinate, claiming that the person acted "illegally" during the operation and sent emails to the four people in advance without his signature and approval, which led to the withdrawal and resending of the invitations. the deputy minister said that a disciplinary investigation procedure had been initiated for the perpetrator: "the employee has apologized and said that he made a mistake because of his over-zealousness. he thought that this would speed up the film selection process and save everyone some time."
however, filmmakers are naturally not buying this argument. in their view, this incident is just the tip of the iceberg, reflecting the overall trend of the greek film industry in deep trouble, and even the various problems of the entire greek government. at the sarajevo film festival in august, the greek film "arcadia" won the best director award. director yorgos zois took the stage to give an impassioned speech, linking the confusion of this oscar selection to a series of tragic events that have occurred in greece recently - including a deadly train accident last year that killed 57 people.
arcadia poster
yorgos zois said that in these tragedies, it is always government officials who evade responsibility and push the blame onto grassroots employees. "if we can sometimes barely understand the ignorance of these people, their arrogant attitude towards working people is unacceptable in any way. the government should be a servant of the people, not a ruler. as long as they use violence, disrespect and arrogance towards us, we will unite on all fronts and keep resisting."
at the same time, the greek ministry of culture employees' union also responded to the deputy minister's remarks, accusing iason fotilas of "looking for scapegoats" and insisting that the deputy minister and senior government officials "take their own responsibilities" instead of pushing the blame on those employees who are honest, diligent, perform their duties conscientiously and pay attention to work transparency.
however, despite all the above voices, the greek ministry of culture did not choose to make up for the loss. in the middle of this month, they decided against all odds that the film selection process would proceed as planned. at that time, several members of the original seven-member film selection committee had resigned for various reasons. as a result, the ministry of culture quickly selected several new members to fill the vacancies. as for the candidate films, since there is only one "the murderer", it will be easier. in the end, without much discussion, the selection committee reached a consensus and nominated the film to represent greece in this year's oscars. as for the quality of the film itself, judging from the 7.4 rating on imdb and the 7.8 rating on douban, it is at least not a bad movie.
poster of dogtooth
historically, greece has competed for the academy award for best foreign language film and later best international film for more than 40 times, and has been nominated five times, the most recent of which was dogtooth directed by yorgos lanthimos in 2010. in addition, the late film master angelopoulos's the entertainer, landscape in the mist, ulysses' gaze and eternity and a day have all had the opportunity to represent greece in the oscars, but have never been appreciated by the oscar judges and have never been nominated.
the paper reporter cheng xiaojun
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