Photo: theacademy via Instagram
By Alya Stationwala
The biggest night in Hollywood is coming up on Feb. 9 and within the mass of recognition, a few Canadians have slipped into the Academy Awards nomination lists including Best Documentary Short, Best Live Action Short and more.
Sami Khan, from Sarnia, Ont., earned a nomination for his co-directing on St. Louis Superman, a story about a battle rapper and activist who was elected in the heavily white, Republican Missouri House of Representatives. Up against a wide range of short documentary stories from around the world including South Korea, Afghanistan, and Sweden, Khan is one of many people bringing in diversity in an otherwise whitewashed run of the Oscars this year.
In a phone interview with Canadian Press writer Victoria Ahearn, Khan talked about the moment he heard the news of his nomination saying him and his family had a mini dance party in their Toronto home before realizing, “We had to drop our daughter off at daycare.”
Meryam Joobeur, a Tunisian-Canadian director and writer, is also nominated for her live-action short film Brotherhood. The story follows a Tunisan father dealing with the return of his oldest son with a mysterious new Syrian wife, causing him to question if his son has been working for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). She has won 22 awards and earned eight other nominations at film festivals around the world for this production since it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2018.
Other Canadians who have earned themselves the chance to compete for a golden statue are Dennis Gassner and Dean DeBlois for their roles in the major productions 1917 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World respectively.
Gassner, born in Vancouver, worked on the production design for Sam Mendes’ WWI epic 1917. This is his seventh Oscar nomination, one of which he won in 1992 for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration on the historical drama about a gangster moving to Hollywood, Bugsy.
DeBlois faces his third nomination for the How to Train your Dragon trilogy alone, earning nominations for the animated films in 2011 and 2015 as well. Up against Xilam’s I Lost My Body, Netflix’s Klaus, Laika Studios’ Missing Link, and Pixar’s Toy Story 4, this is the last chance for the production to win Best Animated Film for its final installment.
In an interview with Ahearn, Deblois said, “When it comes to the Oscars and awards in general, I try not to think about it, otherwise I kind of carry this guilt of representing 400-plus people who worked on the movie.”
Minority Inclusion at the Academy Awards
Despite being one of the most celebrated nights for the film industry, The Academy has had a bad history with representation in their nominations throughout the past, including the famous #OscarsSoWhite controversy of 2015.
Under fire for another year, the Oscars have been criticized for their 2020 white and male dominated nominations for major categories yet again.
Greta Gerwig was snubbed from a Best Director nomination for her film Little Women despite being nominated in multiple acting categories and even Best Picture, leaving the directing category with only male nominees.
Cynthia Erivo, the only person of colour nominated for an acting role this year, is nominated for playing a slave in Harriet, whereas Scarlett Johansson earned herself two acting nominations playing a woman going through a divorce in Marriage Story, and an anti-nazi mother during WWII in Jojo Rabbit.
Besides Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite recognition this year, people of colour and women are often ignored at the major awards in Hollywood. Smaller categories such as Best Live Action Short and Best Documentary Short are examples of places where the underrepresented are earning praise with seven of ten films in those two categories alone telling stories of people of colour and/or created by people of colour.
While most of these movies remain under the radar, Canadians like Sami Khan and Meryam Joobeur are artists that are pushing stories of marginalized people in film on the industry’s biggest platforms.
The Academy Awards will be held this weekend where Hollywood will be celebrating themselves in a glamorous televised party, and where minority artists in film, including some of the Canadian nominees this year, will hopefully be earning themselves a few statuettes.