The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences disqualified the official Israeli entry in the Foreign Film category because its inclusion of English dialog. However, “The Band’s Visit” later managed decent boxoffice and was even transplanted on Broadway as an acclaim musical.
Producers of “The Band’s Visit”-a quirky tale about a small orchestra of Egyptian policemen touring Israel–tell the “New York Times” that the film has 22 minutes of English, and 18 minutes of Hebrew and Arabic. While acclaimed by critics, “Band” was snubbed by Middle East Film festivals.
Israel substituted anti-war film “Beaufort” for the Oscars after the disqualification.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) rules require foreign language and local artistic control. In 1992, Uruguay’s “A Place in World” was disqualified by AMPAS after being selected as one of five finalists for Best Foreign Film due to “insufficient Uruguayan artistic control,” according to “Marketing to Moviegoers: A Handbook.”
Local film organizations choose their country Oscar submissions and those selection processes are often cloaked with intrigue. Meanwhile, AMPAS generally takes a hands-off approach, except to enforce its basic eligibility rules.
“The Band’s Visit” from 2007 proved to be a quality film by virtue of being made into a Tony-award-winning Broadway stage musical in 2016. Transplanting such movie IP (intellectual property) into other platforms with original, though related stories, is called “transmedia.”
For “The Band’s Visit,” the foundation 2007 theatrical grossed $3 million in U.S./Canada boxoffice, making it an “artbuster” hit by standards for a foreign-language film in the domestic market’s “arthouse” category. Worldwide, the cinema gross was solid too surpassing $14 million.
Meanwhile, official entry “Beaufort” managed to crack the circle of the five nominated Oscar Best Foreign Films, but otherwise slipped into obscurity. “Beaufort’s” global box office turned out to be minor—just 7% that of “The Band’s Visit.”
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