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Every year since its inception, the Japanese Academy has recognized an outstanding foreign film. [1] The year that any given film is nominated is not based on the film's domestic release date but rather on the date it is released in Japan. As delays of over four months are not uncommon, many films are nominated in Japan the following year after their release to the Japanese market (i.e. Million Dollar Baby won the American Academy Award for Best Picture for films made in 2004, but the Japanese award, based on its localized release date, is for 2005). In fact, not one of the five films nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Picture had been released in Japan by February 15, 2008, the date of the Japan Academy Prize Ceremony. Although the 2007 recipient of this award, Letters from Iwo Jima , a film almost entirely in Japanese, would not seem to meet the qualification of a "Foreign Language Film", the actual Japanese title of the award, 最優秀外国作品賞 makes no mention of language. It would be more accurately translated as "Best Foreign Production".
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American neo-noir sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood, and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman. The film follows an underappreciated boxing trainer, the mistakes that haunt him from his past, and his quest for atonement by helping an underdog amateur boxer achieve her dream of becoming a professional.
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. Best Picture is the final award of the night and is considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.
Letters from Iwo Jima is a 2006 Japanese-American war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood, starring Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya. The film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the American viewpoint; the two films were shot back to back. Letters from Iwo Jima is almost entirely in Japanese, although it was produced by American companies DreamWorks, Malpaso Productions, and Amblin Entertainment. After Flags of Our Fathers underperformed at the box office, Paramount Pictures swapped the United States distribution rights to Warner Bros., who had the international rights.
- 2018 – La La Land
Beauty and the Beast is a 2017 American musical romantic fantasy film directed by Bill Condon from a screenplay written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos. Co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Mandeville Films, it was filmed in the UK with predominantly British principal actors. The film is a live action adaptation of Disney's 1991 animated film of the same name, itself an adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 18th-century fairy tale. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Emma Watson and Dan Stevens as the eponymous characters with Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, and Emma Thompson in supporting roles.
Miss Sloane is a 2016 political thriller film, directed by John Madden and written by Jonathan Perera. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alison Pill, Jake Lacy, John Lithgow, and Sam Waterston.
- 2017 – Sully
The Martian is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon adapted from the novel of the same name by Andy Weir. The film depicts an astronaut's lone struggle to survive on Mars after being left behind, and efforts to rescue him, and bring him home to Earth. It also stars Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Donald Glover, Aksel Hennie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Zootopia is a 2016 American 3D computer-animated comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 55th Disney animated feature film, directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore, co-directed by Jared Bush, and stars the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J. K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, and Shakira. It details the unlikely partnership between a rabbit police officer and a red fox con artist, as they uncover a criminal conspiracy involving the disappearance of predators.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a 2015 American epic space-opera film produced, co-written and directed by J. J. Abrams. It was produced by Lucasfilm Ltd., Abrams's production company Bad Robot Productions, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Max von Sydow. It was the first Star Wars film to not extensively involve franchise creator George Lucas, who only helped in the film's earliest stages. It is the first installment in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and the seventh episode in the nine-part 'Skywalker saga', following the original and prequel trilogy.
- 2016 – American Sniper
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a 2014 action spy comedy film directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn. The screenplay, written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, is based on Dave Gibbons's and Mark Millar's comic book series The Secret Service. The film follows the recruitment and training of Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, into a secret spy organisation. Eggsy joins a mission to tackle a global threat from Richmond Valentine, a wealthy megalomaniac. Colin Firth, Mark Strong, and Michael Caine play supporting roles.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 post-apocalyptic action film co-written, produced, and directed by George Miller. Miller collaborated with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris on the screenplay. The fourth installment and a revisiting of the Mad Max franchise, it is a joint Australian-American venture produced by Kennedy Miller Mitchell, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, and Village Roadshow Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where petrol and water are scarce commodities. It follows Max Rockatansky, who joins forces with Imperator Furiosa to flee from cult leader Immortan Joe and his army in an armoured tanker truck, leading to a lengthy road battle. The film also features Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton.
Spectre is a 2015 spy film and the twenty-fourth in the James Bond film series produced by Eon Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures. It is the fourth film to feature Daniel Craig as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, and the second film in the series directed by Sam Mendes following Skyfall. It was written by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth. It is the final James Bond film to be co-distributed by Columbia Pictures, as Universal Pictures will become the international distributor of its future films.
- 2015 – Frozen
- 2014 – Les Misérables
3 Idiots is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani. Starring Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani and Omi Vaidya, the film follows the friendship of three students at an Indian engineering college and is a satire about the social pressures under an Indian education system. The film is narrated through parallel dramas, one in the present and the other ten years in the past. It also incorporated real Indian inventions, namely those created by Remya Jose, Mohammad Idris, Jahangir Painter and Sonam Wangchuk.
Captain Phillips is a 2013 American biographical drama-thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi. The film is inspired by the true story of the 2009 Maersk Alabama hijacking, an incident during which merchant mariner Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by pirates in the Guardafui Channel led by Abduwali Muse.
Django Unchained is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized tribute to Spaghetti Westerns using an obvious revisionist history, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance.
- 2013 – The Intouchables
- 2012 – The King's Speech
- 2011 – Avatar
- 2010 – Gran Torino
- 2009 – The Dark Knight
- 2008 – Letters from Iwo Jima
- 2007 – Flags of Our Fathers
- 2006 – Million Dollar Baby
- 2005 – The Last Samurai
- 2004 – The Pianist
- 2003 – Monster's Ball
- 2002 – Billy Elliot
- 2001 – Dancer in the Dark
- 2000 – The Sixth Sense
- 1999 – L.A. Confidential
- 1998 – Titanic
- 1997 – Il Postino
- 1996 – The Shawshank Redemption
- 1995 – Schindler's List
- 1994 – Jurassic Park
- 1993 – JFK
- 1992 – Dances with Wolves
- 1991 – Field of Dreams
- 1990 – Die Hard
- 1989 – The Last Emperor
- 1988 – Platoon
- 1987 – Back to the Future
- 1986 – Amadeus
- 1985 – Once Upon a Time in America
- 1984 – An Officer and a Gentleman
- 1983 – E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- 1982 – Die Blechtrommel
- 1981 – Kramer vs. Kramer
- 1980 – The Deer Hunter
- 1979 – Conversation Piece
- 1978 – Rocky
La La Land is a 2016 American romantic comedy-drama musical film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles.
Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II. Its ensemble cast includes Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Tom Hardy. The film was distributed by Warner Bros.
Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about black female mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race. The film stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury and other missions. The film also features Octavia Spencer as NASA supervisor and mathematician Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monáe as NASA engineer Mary Jackson, with Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell, and Mahershala Ali in supporting roles.
