The 51st annual Student Oscars will be the first ceremony to be held entirely outside the United States.
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The Student Oscars, awarded to young film hopefuls, will be presented in London next month, the Academy has announced, breaking new ground by organising its first ceremony outside the United States. This unprecedented event will take place on 14 October in the British capital, after several years during which the Academy of Oscars has become much more diverse. Since the #OscarsSoWhite controversy launched in 2015, it has notably admitted many non-American members to its ranks.
The French animated short film Goodbye My World is among the winners announced this week and set to be honoured in London. It tells the story of a man trapped in a giant fish suit who tries to cross a city as a mysterious meteor shower hits the planet. The nominees also include a Taiwanese experimental film about teenage sexual awakening, a short film set during the 1910 plague in China and a documentary film set in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. They will compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in their respective categories.
The main Oscar ceremony has never been held outside the United States. But it has sometimes included parts presented from abroad. Diana Ross performed a song from Amsterdam in 1976. Actor Michael Caine opened the 1991 Oscars from the Grand Café in Paris, and the following year the ceremony paid tribute to Star Wars by George Lucas by inviting himself for a live moment aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.
The 51st Student Oscars will be the first ceremony to be held entirely outside the United States. The choice reflects the Academy of Arts and Sciences’ new composition: one-fifth of its members are non-Americans. This year, more than half of the new members admitted were international, including the French director ofAnatomy of a fall Justine Triet and her German actress Sandra Hüller.
The Student Oscars are widely followed in Hollywood. Past winners include Spike Lee, Pete Docter (creator of Monsters Inc. And Up there), Robert Zemeckis (director of Back to the future) and Cary Fukunaga (director of Dying can wait).