Vietnam has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film since 1993. The award, previously named the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, [lower-alpha 1] is presented annually by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue. [2] 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 introduced for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since. [3]
Trần Anh Hùng's The Scent of Green Papaya was Vietnam's first submission for the 1993 awards. Despite the film being financed and produced in France, Hùng asked permission to represent Vietnam instead—it uses mainly Vietnamese language and the characters are portrayed by Vietnamese actors. [4] [5] It is the only Vietnamese film to secure a nomination, and was the first nomination received by a Southeast Asian country in the category. [6] [7] The Scent of Green Papaya and the three subsequent submissions—Hồ Quang Minh's Gone, Gone Forever Gone (1996), Tony Bui's Three Seasons (1999), and Hùng's Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000)—were directed by overseas Vietnamese directors and chosen without any support councils, deriving solely from the directors' relationship with foreign partners. [5] [8] Of all four, only Gone, Gone Forever Gone was domestically funded. [5] In September 2003, the Ministry of Culture and Information decided to send Đỗ Minh Tuấn's Foul King, a film entirety produced by Vietnamese, to compete in the category. [9] It was not, however, included on the final list announced by the AMPAS in October. [10] [11]
Vietnam initially received the AMPAS' invitation to participate in the competition in 2006, when a requirement was introduced that films needed to be commercially-released for at least seven consecutive days in a movie theater in its respective country during the eligibility period. [12] [13] The Buffalo Boy was the first selection by the Ministry of Culture and Information following the invitation. [14] [15] The ministry was merged into the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) in 2007, who has since decided the submissions annually. [16] [17] As of 2022 [update] , Vietnam has successfully submitted nineteen films— Glorious Ashes (2023) is the most recent submission in this category.
The AMPAS has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956, while The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. They vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. [2] [3]
The Vietnamese submission is chosen by the MCST, formerly the Ministry of Culture and Information, since 2006. The MCST appoints a council to choose one film among those released that year to be submitted as Vietnam's official entry the following year. [18] [19] The council works on the principle of public discussion and votes via secret ballot—the chosen film must attain the highest score on a 10-point scale and the average above 9 points. [20] [21] The chosen films, along with their English subtitles, are sent to the AMPAS, where they are screened for the jury. [22]
In 2008, Black Forest (Rừng đen) was the only film submitted to an open call for entries but was deemed ineligible since it had not been screened in a commercial cinema per AMPAS requirements. [23] [24] Similarly, the MCST chose not make an entry in 2013, when the only available film Blood Letter (Thiên mệnh anh hùng) did not meet the release time. [14] [25] Vietnam also chose not make a 2010 entry because the films reviewed did not meet the requirements; [26] [27] while in 2014, they did not receive any invitation from the AMPAS for the first time since 2006. [28] [29]
Đặng Nhật Minh is one of Vietnam's foremost film directors. He began making documentary films around 1965 and is the first Vietnamese person to be awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture, in 1999. His films have won several prizes at international film festivals.
The Vietnam Film Festival, founded in 1970, is a domestic film festival of Vietnam. It is considered as the major event of Vietnamese cinema with awards for numerous categories ranging from feature film to documentary film, animated film. The festival is held for each two or three years in different host cities all over Vietnam.
The 16th Vietnam Film Festival was held from December 8 to December 12, 2009 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with the slogan "For a reformed and integrated Vietnam cinema".
The 11th Vietnam Film Festival was held from November 28 to November 30, 1996, in Hanoi, Vietnam, with the slogan: "For an advanced Vietnam cinema imbued with national identity".
The 9th Vietnam Film Festival was held from November 28 to December 2, 1990, in Nha Trang, Vietnam, with the slogan: "For artistic creativity and perfecting socialist Vietnamese people, for the development of national cinema".
The 8th Vietnam Film Festival was held from March 15 to March 22, 1988, in Danang, Vietnam, with the slogan "For the creation of art and perfection of the new socialist people. For the development of the national cinema".
The 4th Vietnam Film Festival was held from April 14 to April 21, 1977 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with the slogan: "For the Socialist Fatherland and the people's happiness. For the development of the national cinema.".
Best Director Award is one of the awards presented at the Vietnam Film Festival to recognize a filmmaker with the achievement in directing which has been determined the best by the juries of feature film, direct-to-video, documentary film and animated film categories.
Hồ Quang Minh was a Vietnamese-born Swiss film director.
The 1st Vietnam Film Festival was held from August 17 to August 28, 1970, in Hanoi, Vietnam, with the slogan "For the Fatherland - For the Socialism".
The 18th Vietnam Film Festival was held from October 14 to October 16, 2013 in Hạ Long City, Quảng Ninh Province, Vietnam, with the slogan "Vietnamese Cinema - Ethnicity, Humanity, Creativity, Integration".
The 20th Vietnam Film Festival was held from November 24 to November 28, 2017, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with the slogan "Building a modern and humane film industry".
The 21st Vietnam Film Festival was held from November 23 to November 27, 2019, in Vũng Tàu City, Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu province, Vietnam, with the slogan "Building a national, humane, creative and integrated Vietnamese film industry".
The 2018 Kite Awards is the 26th edition of Vietnam Cinema Association Awards, also the 17th edition since the award is officially named Kite. It honored the best in Vietnam film, television works of 2018. The ceremony was broadcast live on April 12, 2019, from the Army Theatre in Southern Region, Tân Bình District, Ho Chi Minh City beginning at 20:00. The ceremony aired live on VTV2 channel in Vietnam.
The Missing Picture isn't officially the first film from Southeast Asia to receive an Oscar nomination. In 1994, The Scent Of Green Papaya, a rapturous drama by France-based Tran Anh Hung, represented Vietnam and was shortlisted.