The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group which holds the Golden Globes annually, came under fire this week when it was announced that Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung’s critically acclaimed film “Minari” will be classified as a foreign language film for Golden Globes voters.
The project, which hails from A24 and Plan B and stars former “The Walking Dead” alum Steven Yeun, follows a Korean immigrant family who moves to a small farm in Arkansas.
Unlike the Oscars, the HFPA has a longstanding policy stipulating that contenders in best drama or comedy/musical categories must feature at least 50% English dialogue. Otherwise, they can’t compete for top prizes like Best Film in either category.
As a result, acclaimed films like Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory” and Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar Best Picture winner “Parasite” were excluded from any major nominations in the ceremony held in January this year.
Now it has happened again, this time to a film that “Shang-Chi” star Simu Liu pointed out is “an American movie written and directed by an American filmmaker set in America with an American lead actor and produced by an American production company.”
Wang says these are “antiquated rules that characterize American as only English-speaking…[Minari] is a story about an immigrant family, in America, pursuing the American dream.”
Both “Crazy Rich Asians” actor Harry Shum Jr. and The Black List founder Franklin Leonard pointed out the hypocrisy over the fact that a decade ago Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which boasts only 30% of its dialogue in English, was not excluded from any major categories and was nominated for best picture, director and script.
Filmmaker Phil Lord (“The Lego Movie,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) called for action saying the HFPA should have no choice but to drop this rule saying: “Filmmakers will boycott. It will be in every speech. Every interview. This is a dumb decision.”
Source: Variety