The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will expand the list of festivals that can serve as standalone qualifiers for the International Film Oscar category, AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer confirmed this morning during an interview with Deadline at the Tokyo Film Festival.
Kramer, who has become a frequent fixture on the international festival circuit in recent years, is at Tokyo alongside AMPAS President Lynette Howell Taylor and Chief Membership, Impact and Industry Officer Meredith Shea to take part in a series of public talks titled Academy in Tokyo. The sessions are one of the headline events this year at the Tokyo Film Festival. Kramer will also receive an honorary leadership award. Ahead of the festivities, Kramer sat down with Deadline in Tokyo.
“Our plan is to expand the number of festivals,” Kramer told Deadline when asked about the list of festivals that can serve as feeders for the International Oscar category. Currently, under the rules introduced in May, films that win the top award at Berlin, Busan, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, and Venice can be automatically submitted for the international category alongside films chosen by a country’s official submission committee.
Kramer continued: “We started with six festivals because we wanted to make sure there were juried awards, which not every festival has.”
Kramer added that the new rule is part of the Academy’s plan to globalize its efforts and approach the international category in a “more holistic way.”
“A few years ago, the first thing we did was create a rule allowing refugee filmmakers who are no longer in their home country to have their films submitted by a host-country committee,” Kramer said.
“That was the first step in creating a broader aperture for who can participate in the category. The next step was to consider how we could select films beyond committee-selected submissions and ensure greater global representation.”
Kramer said AMPAS remains in constant conversation with film festivals across the globe.
“We want to make sure there is proper global representation in the number of festivals we’re working with for this category,” he said. “It’s all about inviting more films into the conversation.”
On the topic of international, Kramer said 25% of the Academy’s membership now resides outside the United States—a natural reflection, he believes, of global shifts in film production and consumption.
“I think the lines between U.S. and non-U.S. cinema, first-run and classic films, animation, and documentaries have become much less distinct,” he said. “A lot of this has to do with the pandemic, when people at home watched films they normally wouldn’t have watched—young people especially. It changed the nature of our industry.”
Kramer said the Academy’s increasing global makeup is one of the main factors that makes YouTube the most appropriate broadcast home for the Oscars moving forward. It was announced in December 2025 that YouTube won the rights to host the Academy Awards starting in 2029. The Google-owned service outbid other offers, including one from the Oscars’ longtime home ABC, which has been hosting the event since 1976. Disney’s deal runs through 2028. YouTube’s first show will be the 101st Oscars ceremony, and its deal will run through 2033.
“The beauty of the YouTube deal is that everyone will see the same show,” he said. “We’ll have control over fan engagement and reach 2.5 billion people around the world at the same time, on the same night, in more than 30 languages. It also gives us more quality control over what our fans see and experience. That’s really important.”
YouTube’s deal for the Oscars has been one of the biggest shifts as streaming platforms take on more live events. Netflix has the SAG Awards, now renamed The Actor Awards, and Prime Video will broadcast the Emmys from 2027. But the alliance between big tech and the film world hasn’t been without substantial friction; take Amazon’s mishandling of Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial.
When asked whether the Academy has planned for similar scenarios, Kramer concluded: “There’s no censorship allowed at the Academy, at the Oscars, or on our broadcast. We’ve been very clear about that, and Google and YouTube completely understand.”
The Tokyo Film Festival runs until November 4.
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