Brazil and the Oscars: Low investments reduce the chances of national films

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL –  Pre-nominations for the 2021 edition have already been released, and the Brazilians considered to take part in the competition have once again been left out.

For the “Best International Film” category (formerly “Best Foreign Film”), Brazil’s nomination to the committee selecting the 2021 finalists was Babenco: Tell Me When I Die, a documentary about the life and work of director Héctor Babenco, directed by Bárbara Paz.

However, this year’s defeat is not an unprecedented situation: Brazil has never brought home an Oscar – some Brazilians have been awarded the prize individually, but in productions attributed to other countries.

According to experts, the main obstacle is the lack of investment. Not only in film production, but also in the distribution of works, in the international promotion of Brazilian feature films needed to attract the Academy’s attention.

“The dispute for the Oscar demands a very complex marketing and release project, involving extremely specialized professionals and large investments, which a Brazilian film hardly ever has,” explains Flávio Souza Brito, professor of the Cinema course at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP).

The relationship between Brazilian productions and the Oscar is extensive and complex. On the list of nominees that ended up losing to other candidates in the final decision, there were great successes of Brazilian cinema, such as City of God (2002) and Central Station (1998).

Brazilian cinema has been nominated four times in the “Best International Film” category: it debuted with The Given Word in 1963, came back 33 years later with O Quatrilho (1996), then with Four Days in September in 1998, and for the last time in 1999, with Central Station.

In 2003, City of God was nominated by the Brazilian committee for the category, but was not included in the final cut of nominees and ended up being included in categories considered to be the main ones, such as direction, script and photography.

One of the most famous cases of the relationship between the Oscars and Brazil is Fernanda Montenegro’s nomination for “Best Actress” in 1999, for Central Station.

It is unusual for a film in the international category to be nominated for the main awards of the evening, so expectations were high. In the end, the winner was Gwyneth Paltrow, for Shakespeare in Love.

Brazil has been selected twice for the “Best Documentary” category, with The Salt of the Earth in 2015 and The Edge of Democracy in 2020, in addition to the nomination of The Boy and the World (2013) for “Best Animation”.

It is worthy of note that The Edge of Democracy made it to the final round to win the documentary award with a major support: the Netflix streaming service, which helped promote director Petra Costa’s film worldwide.

With so many nominations and quality productions, it is often difficult to understand why Brazil has never won an Oscar. Financial hurdles, the award’s own voting system, and even governmental issues are mentioned as potential reasons for the difficulty of Brazilian films to win the statuettes.

The Oscar voting system

Unlike other awards, such as the Cannes, Venice or Toronto film festivals, which have a relatively small and restricted jury, the Oscars rely on over 8,000 votes to decide the winner of each category.

“The Oscar community is not just made up of critics. It is heterogeneous in ages, backgrounds and nationalities,” explains André Gatti, also a professor at FAAP’s Cinema course.

Moreover, the category accepts films of very different formats, which makes it very difficult to outline a standard within the feature films that have won this category.

Flávio de Souza Brito, who in addition to being a professor is the editor of the specialized website Mnemocine, says: “Theme choices, the presence of renowned professionals or a ‘superior’ aesthetic quality are very subjective parameters. Fictional narratives, with strong emotional mobilization would supposedly have a greater chance, but they don’t guarantee anything.”

Lack of investment and distribution

A common perception among experts regarding the choice of films to be nominated or win Oscars is that quality alone is not enough to attract the Academy’s attention.

In general, films that make it to the ceremony have achieved some degree of popularity within the film industry.

Creating this notoriety requires investment, both in the feature film’s production and distribution. To create what is called a “buzz”, the discussions and comments about the film, the production must be seen by many people — and by influential people.

Brito explains that a more robust, long-form cultural policy could foster audiovisual production in Brazil and increase the chances of national projects gaining external visibility.

“In general, in the internal dimension, growth requires strengthening the audiovisual industry, consolidating its production; and, in the external sphere, alongside the other commercial exchanges, support for the diffusion strategies of Brazilian cinema.”

He also mentions the case of the Argentine film industry, which has won the “Best Foreign Film” award twice: “Although Argentina has a much smaller economy than Brazil, its cinema has greater international visibility from a series of initiatives, such as embassy screenings and co-productions with other countries.”

“We don’t have a body, a distributor to diffuse, publicize, expand Brazilian film in the international market. The Brazilian film depends on the interest of small distributors to distribute our films abroad. Possibly a larger distributor will be interested in one film or another, but it’s uncommon,” said André Gatti.

Money is also an aggravating factor in film production. Brazilian filmmakers often rely on a very lean budget, which hinders the execution of ideas and projects. “An expensive film in Brazil is a cheap film in the United States, France, or England. Our industry is still running on very low investment values in terms of production,” Gatti points out.

Even without an Oscar, the quality of Brazilian cinema is recognized

Receiving an award as prestigious as the Oscar is always a tremendous recognition of a film’s quality and projection, and it should be celebrated. However, the lack of a golden statuette does not mean that the quality of films produced in Brazil is inferior or is perceived as such.

“Brazilian cinema that has achieved some kind of international recognition are films not in the same category as the films nominated for the Oscars,” says André Gatti, explaining that the Brazilian films gaining the most projection abroad nowadays are more focused on artistic production and less on the commercial perspective.

Brazil has been awarded several times in festivals of worldwide recognition, such as the Cannes Festival. In 1963, The Given Word took the event’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and in 2019, Bacurau was honored by the “critics’ choice” award.

“Brazilian cinema has found ways to gain recognition. It always does,” Gatti concluded.

Source: CNN Brasil