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| Vadim Perelman, the director of House of Sand and Fog, with Aghdashloo. (AP) |
Los Angeles, Feb. 25 (Reuters): Who the heck is Shohreh Aghdashloo? What about Djimon Hounsou and Fernando Mereilles? This coming Sunday, Oscar watchers just may find out.
When nominees for Oscars were named in January, many film fans were surprised at so many actors, directors, writers and others from countries outside the US who earned nominations for the US film industry’s top awards.
But industry watchers said the nominations for Aghdashloo, Hounsou and the others points to the increasingly global scale of filmmaking, and they see the trend towards a more worldly face at the Oscars continuing into the foreseeable future.
“The Oscars always reflect what is going on in the film business as a whole, and the film business is getting more international,” said Timothy Gray, managing editor of show business newspaper Daily Variety.
Gray points out that even best movie front-runner Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was distributed by Hollywood’s New Line Cinema, was made in New Zealand by Kiwis and financed by a variety of investors from around the globe.
British actors, of course, have always been a staple at the Oscars, and more recently Australians like Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe have done well, winning the awards that are handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Outside English-speaking countries, however, nominees had mostly been confined to the foreign language film categories, and that seems to be changing.
This year, Brazilian film City of God, about kids living in the slums of Rio de Janiero, earned four nominations — one for best director Fernando Merielles and the others for adapted screenplay, editing and cinematography.
Aghdashloo, 51, is well-known in her home country of Iran. She has been nominated for best supporting actress for playing an Iranian exile in House of Sand and Fog.
Hounsou, 39, was born in West Africa and modelled in Europe before coming to Hollywood. He gained prominence in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 movie Amistad, about a slave revolt, and has been nominated for playing an artist with AIDS in In America.