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.
The unprecedented event will take place on October 14 in the British capital, after several years in which the Academy Awards have become much more diverse.
Since the #OscarsSoWhite controversy launched in 2015, it has notably admitted many non-American members.
French animated short film “Au Revoir Mon Monde” 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.
Nominees also include a Taiwanese experimental film about teenage sexual awakening, a short film set during the 1910 plague epidemic in China and a documentary made in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.
They will compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in their respective categories.
The main Oscars ceremony has never been held outside the United States. But it has sometimes included portions 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 George Lucas’s “Star Wars” by taking a live moment aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.
The 51st annual Student Oscars will be the first ceremony to be held entirely outside the United States.
A choice that reflects the new composition of the Academy of Arts and Sciences: a fifth of its members are not American. This year, more than half of the new members admitted were international, including the French director of “Anatomy of a Fall” Justine Triet and her German actress Sandra Hüller.
The Student Oscars are widely watched in Hollywood. Past winners include Spike Lee, Pete Docter (creator of “Monsters, Inc.” and “Up”), Robert Zemeckis (director of “Back to the Future”) and Cary Fukunaga (director of “No Time to Die”).
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