Does No Other Land’s Oscar nomination suggest the Academy is progressing?
In awards season we’re reminded of the industry’s biases amid the geopolitical context of the past year. Will this year be any different?
–
Awards season is now reaching its apex. The Golden Globes have taken place, while the Baftas, the Producers and Directors Guild Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards are all around the corner, culminating with the Academy Awards on 2 March.
Each award over the next few weeks will indicate who, or what, will walk away with the prized gold statuette. And while it’s great fun to speculate as to whether I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres could beat Demi Moore in The Substance for Best Actress, the most important thing to remember is that this is not a meritocracy. You don’t win an Oscar by being the best, you win by being the most appealing to the Academy, who come with their own implicit set of biases amid the geopolitical context of the past year.
As a child in Sudan, I would stay up all night to watch the ceremony, loving every tearful speech and Billy Crystal dance number. When I got older and decided to become a film journalist, my first piece was on the industry’s race problem and the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy. I’d later do some work on the awards campaigns of several nominees and one winner (rhymes with Shmill Shmith), truly finding out how the proverbial sausage is made. So I have plenty of disheartening stats I could cite on the lack of representation, which continues to underserve women and people of colour.
Despite how the Hollywood elite like to believe they’re woke, open-minded liberals, the stats don’t reflect this image. Only one Muslim actor (Riz Ahmed) has been nominated for best actor in 97 years. Two performances by a Muslim have been awarded a supporting role, and they were both by Mahershala Ali. Aside from that, the most high-profile win was by Asif Kapadia in 2016 for his magnificent documentary about Amy Winehouse.
Now, a decade later in that same category, the Palestinian directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal have been nominated alongside co-directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham for their stunning film No Other Land. The collective document their ongoing resistance to the occupation of the West Bank, and offer a hope that Palestinian and Israeli solidarity is possible.
To give credit to the Academy voters, nominating No Other Land for the top accolade showed far greater bravery by the industry than when the film premiered at the Berlinale last year. Despite winning the top award in Berlin, the film-makers were accused of antisemitism after a speech that called for a ceasefire in Gaza, with the city’s mayor stating: “Berlin is firmly on Israel’s side.” This was a particularly personal attack on the directors, who are themselves the subject of the film, which follows Adra’s campaign against the destruction of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank with support from Abraham. As inspiring as their bond is, it is a sombre piece of work exposing the stark contrast of Adra’s life under occupation and Abraham’s life of freedom.
At least the Oscars recognised that this was not a question of sides, but of shared humanity. For me, this nomination was a welcome sight in a space that often omits art from the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly Muslim film-makers and storytelling.
The struggle for recognition in part comes down to the selection process for Best International Feature Film. Unlike in the other categories, these films are submitted by the country of origin, which in many regards is a political rather than egalitarian process. In 2002, for example, Palestine’s proposal, Elia Suleiman’s acclaimed black comedy Divine Intervention, was denied entry as the Academy did not recognise Palestinian statehood. But this did not seem to matter when Hong Kong, Taiwan or Wales — despite not being United Nations member states — were allowed to submit their films. After much controversy, Divine Intervention was included as a submission from the “Palestinian territories” the following year, but did not win.
Instead, the Academy has chosen time and time again to reward a western lens on the rest of the world, particularly the Middle East. The first example was the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, followed by the Greek director Costa-Gavras’s 1969 Algerian-set thriller Z. The entire decade of the 70s and 80s would pass without any Arab representation among the international feature films at the Oscars, and it was not until 1995 when an Algerian would be nominated, for The Dust of Life, directed by Rachid Bouchareb.
There have been a handful of other films from the region acknowledged by the Hollywood elite over the years, such as the harrowing Capernaum from the wonderful Lebanese film-maker Nadine Labaki, and Jordan’s Naji Abu Nowar’s coming-of-age story Theeb. But this number dwarfs in comparison to the films about western experiences, from Lawrence of Arabia to Zero Dark Thirty and Casablanca to Raiders of the Lost Ark. While largely excellent films, they still use Arab, North African and Muslim societies as backdrops for white narratives.
Having been let down by the unimaginative choice of nominees year after year, I don’t put a massive amount of stock in the Oscars. This year, though, I have a glimmer of hope with No Other Land that maybe, finally, the Academy voters will be able to look beyond what fortifies the status quo about Muslims and others from the Mena region, and progress to be genuinely curious about art that reflects their struggles, humanity and lived experiences.
Topics
Get the Hyphen weekly
Subscribe to Hyphen’s weekly round-up for insightful reportage, commentary and the latest arts and lifestyle coverage, from across the UK and Europe
This form may not be visible due to adblockers, or JavaScript not being enabled.