International
Oscar departs from norm; awards ‘Parasite’ multiple times
MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences sprang a few surprises at the Oscar Awards today. For starters, it rechristened the foreign language film category to best international feature film. It took that renaming pretty seriously by showering the South Korean film Parasite with oodles of major awards: best picture, best screenplay, best international feature film, and best director (Bong Joon-ho).
For the South Korean entry, it was history in the making as it is the first international film to win an Oscar for best feature. Joon-ho will go down in the history books: he is the second director of Asian descent to take home an Oscar; Ang Lee was the first with English language films Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi. He is also the second helmer of a foreign language film to be accorded that honour; the first being Alfonso Cuarón for Roma. “I will be drinking in the after party,” he said to the merriment of all the Hollywood stars present at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Another surprise was the near total shunning of Netflix’s entries. Estimates are that the streaming giant spent nearly $70 million (ref: The Verge) in its campaign for the Oscar. It was nominated in 24 categories, but it could get its hands on only two of the statuettes: that for American Factory (Best Documentary produced by the former president and first lady Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company) and Laura Dern (best supporting actress for her role in Marriage Story).
The other big winners: Brad Pitt (best supporting actor in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Taiki Waititi (best adapted screenplay for Jojo Rabbit), and Renee Zellweger (best actress for her portrayal of Judy Garland in Judy), Joaquin Phoenix (for his near-perfect performance as the lead actor in the billion-dollar plus grossing Joker), best film editing and sound editing (Ford vs Ferrari), original score (Joker, Hildur Guðnadóttir), Best animated feature (Toy Story4), best visual FX (1917), Sound Mixing (1917).
Phoenix spoke about how we need to live responsibly, respect nature, our resources, and how compassion and love can go a long way in his acceptance speech, in a departure from most other speeches which consisted of thanking the academy or peers or the technical, cast and crew of the film.
The Oscar ceremony was telecast on Hotstar and Star World in India earlier this morning with advertisers like Kia Motors, Cred, Amazon Prime Video's Hunters, Lenovo, Dyson, Jack Daniels coming on board.
The full list of 2020 Oscar winners
Best picture
Parasite- Winner
1917
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Ford v Ferrari
Best actor
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker -Winner
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
Best actress
Renée Zellweger, Judy- Winner
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Best director
Bong Joon-ho, Parasite- Winner
Sam Mendes, 1917
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Best supporting actress
Laura Dern, Marriage Story-Winner
Florence Pugh, Little Women
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
Best supporting actor
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood- Winner
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
International feature film
South Korea, Parasite-Winner
France, Les Misérables
North Macedonia, Honeyland
Poland, Corpus Christi
Spain, Pain and Glory
Documentary short feature
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)- Winner
In the Absence
Life Overtakes Me
St. Louis Superman
Walk Run Cha-Cha
Documentary feature
American Factory-Winner
The Cave
The Edge of Democracy
For Sama
Honeyland
Animated feature film
Toy Story 4-Winner
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Klaus
Missing Link
Music (original song)
"(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" from Rocketman-Winner
"I'm Standing With You" from Breakthrough
"Into The Unknown" from Frozen II
"Stand Up" from Harriet
"I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" from Toy Story 4
"Glasgow" from Wild Rose
Music (original score)
Joker- Winner
Little Women
Marriage Story
1917
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Visual effects
1917- Winner
Avengers: Endgame
The Irishman
The Lion King
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Best film editing
Ford v Ferrari- Winner
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Parasite
Best cinematography
Roger Deakins, 1917- Winner
Rodrigo Prieto, The Irishman
Lawrence Sher, Joker
Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse
Robert Richardson, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Best sound mixing
1917-Winner
Ad Astra
Joker
Ford v Ferrari
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Best sound editing
Ford v Ferrari-Winner
1917
Joker
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Makeup and hairstyling
Bombshell- Winner
Joker
Judy
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
1917
Best costume design
Jacqueline Durran, Little Women-Winner
Sandy Powell & Christopher Peterson, The Irishman
Mark Bridges, Joker
Arianne Phillips, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Mayes C. Rubeo, Jojo Rabbit
Best production design
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood-Winner
The Irishman
1917
Jojo Rabbit
Parasite
Live-action short film
The Neighbors' Window-Winner
Brotherhood
Nefta Football Club
Saria
A Sister
Best adapted screenplay
Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit-Winner
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes
Todd Phillips & Scott Silver, Joker
Best original screenplay
Bong Joon-ho, Parasite-Winner
Rian Johnson, Knives Out
Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Animated short film
Hair Love- Winner
Dcera (Daughter)
Kitbull
Memorable
Sister
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and SofÃa Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. SofÃa Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
