Academy Leaders Outline Global Push for the Oscars at Tokyo Film Festival

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it will keep expanding its international reach, from recruiting members in underrepresented countries to moving the Oscars ceremony to YouTube. Leaders laid out the plans at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where CEO Bill Kramer said the portion of members living outside the United States has risen from roughly 5% to 25% over the past decade.

Kramer spoke on an Academy in Tokyo panel with Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor and chief membership, impact and industry officer Meredith Shea. Festival director Hisamatsu Takeo moderated. The festival also gave Kramer its Global Cinema Leadership Special Award.

Kramer said a decade ago only 5% to 6% of members were based outside the U.S. "Now it's 25%, and that number is growing," he said. The Academy has about 70 members in Japan. He tied the change to the way films are made and watched, noting that audiences increasingly see movies outside their native language. Every category at the most recent Oscars had international representation, he said, including best picture. He described Bong Joon Ho's 2020 best picture win for "Parasite" as "a pivot, a shift" in the Academy's thinking about global cinema.

Howell Taylor explained how new members are found. Besides Oscar nominees, who are automatically put forward, and candidates sponsored by current members, each branch has an Aperture committee tasked with finding filmmakers worldwide. Each year, she said, the Academy sets a specific focus on countries that may be underrepresented. She rejected the idea that a larger membership means lower standards. "Our membership was smaller because we were not as global," she said.

Over the past couple of years, the Academy has held events in India, London, Rio, Morelia, Marrakech and Busan. Kramer said the city-by-city member events will continue "all over the world." He called the Tokyo visit the Academy's first official trip to the festival, adding that "it won't be our last."

Shea stressed that the process is open to filmmakers everywhere. Submitting a film for Oscar consideration costs nothing in any category, more than 200 festival awards make short films automatically eligible, and members can watch contenders on the Academy Screening Room app. "The Academy is global, and it welcomes all filmmakers," she said.

The biggest step toward a worldwide audience is the Oscars' move to YouTube. Kramer said that from 2029 the ceremony will be available free to 2.5 billion people in more than 30 languages, so everyone can watch at the same time in the same format.

Asked whether the Tokyo festival could join the six festivals whose top prizes now qualify films for the international feature race, Kramer said the Academy is looking to expand that list and is undertaking the process this year. The first six were chosen largely on "the timing on the calendar," he said, and Howell Taylor described discussions as ongoing. Kramer also said he does not see the international feature category becoming redundant as the Academy grows more global.

Animation also reflects the shift. Shea, who ran the animated feature category for more than a decade, said submissions grew from 12 to close to 40 over that period, with at least six anime titles a year. In closing, Kramer said he is struck on these trips by the warmth and sense of community, and by how "we all speak the same cinema language."