In 2020, the Oscars broke new ground by giving Best Picture to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. It was the first time a foreign film had ever won Best Picture in the 92-year history of the awards show. Many people perceived the win as the Academy finally recognizing the merits of foreign cinema and setting a standard for other award shows to acknowledge the quality of international features. However, these individuals were disappointed when they heard that Minari had been nominated for the best foreign film at the 2021 Golden Globes.

Minari is a 2020 movie about a small Korean family that moves to the mid-U.S. in the 1980s. Most people who were fortunate enough to see Minari at exclusive online screenings believe the movie is one of the best movies of the year and at least deserving of a nomination for the best picture, not of best foreign film. Although most of the characters in the film speak Korean, the film is very American. It is set in America, has central themes about the American dream, made by an American director, and produced by Brad Pitt and Plan B Entertainment, an American production company. Minari is more American than Korean, but the Golden Globes have only nominated it for the best foreign film.

The reasoning for the Golden Globes’ placement of the movie is that if a film has over seventy percent of its dialogue spoken in any language other than English, it is automatically placed in the foreign film category and is ineligible for a best picture nomination. Many people find the requirement reductive of Minari by ignoring the movie’s themes and message for an outdated idea of an international feature. Minari is inherently American and should not be placed in the foreign film category because it is not a foreign film.

Additionally, the idea that a movie nominated for the best foreign film cannot be nominated for best picture is almost insulting. Award shows like The Oscars and The Golden Globes are meant to recognize quality and celebrate cinema. Despite that, the Golden Globes has a strict rule that a foreign film cannot be nominated for best picture. The guideline almost invalidates the quality that so many foreign-language films have by locking them out of one of the most prestigious awards that a movie can receive. The Golden Globes is the second most recognizable movie awards show. The guidelines that it sets for foreign cinema are genuinely harmful and perpetuate the misconception that foreign films are naturally below domestic features.