List of Bolivian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
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Bolivia has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1995. The award is handed out annually by the United StatesAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue.[1] It was not created until the 1956 Academy Awards, in which a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since.[2] Ten Bolivian films have been designated to compete for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Five have been accepted by AMPAS, three of which were directed by Juan Carlos Valdivia. So far, no Bolivian film has yet been nominated for an Oscar.
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. The capital is Sucre, while the seat of government and financial center is located in La Paz. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales, a mostly flat region in the east of the country.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy's corporate management and general policies are overseen by a Board of Governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956.[2] The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award.[1] Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Bolivia for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.
The secret ballot, also known as Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous, forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote buying. The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy.
Three of Bolivia's submissions were directed by Juan Carlos Valdivia and two were co-productions with Mexico. Bolivia's first submission, Jonah and the Pink Whale, is an erotic drama set in the 1980s amidst an upper-class Bolivian family, against a backdrop of military politics and drug trafficking. Eleven years later, Valdivia was again in the competition with American Visa, a comedy-thriller about a Bolivian professor trying to get a visa to join his son and work illegally in the United States. Bolivia's most recent submission, Zona Sur, was also directed by Valdivia, but had no Mexican input. Zona Sur centers on a wealthy, white Bolivian divorcee who is living beyond her means in contemporary Bolivia, and her relationship with her three spoiled children and her two Aymara servants.
The Aymara or Aimara people are an indigenous nation in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 1 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Their ancestors lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca in the late 15th or early 16th century, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American Wars of Independence (1810–25), the Aymaras became subjects of the new nations of Bolivia and Peru. After the War of the Pacific (1879–83), Chile annexed territory occupied by the Aymaras.
Sexual Dependency, a co-production with the United States, was Bolivia's second Oscar submission. Set in Santa Cruz, Bolivia and Ithaca, New York, it tells five barely connected stories of teenagers and their early sexual experiences.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra, commonly known as Santa Cruz, is the largest city in Bolivia and the capital of the Santa Cruz department. Situated on the Pirai River in the eastern Tropical Lowlands of Bolivia, the city of Santa Cruz and its metropolitan area are home to over 70% of the population of the department and it is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. The city was first founded in 1561 by Spanish explorer Ñuflo de Chavez about 200 km (124 mi) east of its current location, and was moved several times until it was finally established on the Pirai River in the late 16th century. For much of its history, Santa Cruz was mostly a small outpost town, and even after Bolivia gained its independence in 1825 there was little attention from the authorities or the population in general to settle the region. It was not until after the middle of the 20th century with profound agrarian and land reforms that the city began to grow at a very fast pace.
Ithaca, Ithaki or Ithaka is a Greek island located in the Ionian Sea, off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and to the west of continental Greece.
New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the United States. With an estimated 19.54 million residents in 2018, it is the fourth most populous state. In order to distinguish the state from the city with the same name, it is sometimes referred to as New York State.
‡ Dates and years listed for each ceremony were the eligibility period of film release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period was done on a seasonal basis, from August to July. For the 6th ceremony, held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.
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