Regularly accused of being too masculine and too white, the Academy of Oscars published on Tuesday the list of 819 new members invited to join its ranks this year, made up of 45% women and 36% of "underrepresented" ethnic minorities. in the organization ”.
Among the new arrivals are actress Awkwafina ( Crazy Rich Asians ), Cynthia Erivo ( Harriet ), Eva Longoria and French filmmakers Ladj Ly ( Les Misérables ) and Jérémy Clapin ( I lost my body ).
A rookie of choice
The Academy has also recruited the French actress Adèle Haenel, symbol of a new impetus from the #MeToo movement in France since she accused director Christophe Ruggia in November of "repeated touching" when she was a teenager.
The star of Portrait of the young girl on fire also distinguished herself by leaving the room of the Cesar ceremony with a crash after the announcement that the award for the best director went to Roman Polanski, who has become for many a symbol of unpunished sexual assault. .
In 2016, after several years of scathing criticism of the composition of its colleges considered disconnected from society, the Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences announced a doubling of the number of women and members from ethnic minorities by 2020. "The Academy has exceeded these two objectives," she said Tuesday in a statement.
If the new members accept (which is almost always the case), the proportion of women in the Academy will increase to 33%, against 25% in 2015. Seven of the seventeen professional categories represented at the Oscars have recruited this year more women than men, stresses the Academy in its press release.
Towards greater diversity
This is particularly the case in the category of actors, whose vintage 2020 sees the arrival of Zendaya, Zazie Beetz ( Joker ), the next James Bond girl Ana de Armas or Yalitza Aparicio, a Mexican native revealed in Roma who had won him to compete for an Oscar for "best actress".
As for the “underrepresented minorities”, in other words all the members not being white, their number tripled to pass from 554 in 2015 to 1.787 this year, that is to say 19% of the workforce. In order to meet its objectives, the Academy has become much more international in recent years, tripling its foreign staff which is now more than 2,100 (out of just under 10,000 in total).
Only the members of the Academy can choose the winners of the Oscars and many believe that it is this more open recruitment that allowed this year the coronation of Parasite , the first feature film in a foreign language to win the prize for "best film" . A dozen members of the South Korean film team were also invited by the Academy on Tuesday. Its director, Bong Joon-ho, was already one of them.
Almost half of the new members are non-American and represent 68 different nationalities. To boost its diversity, the Academy also had to significantly increase its enrollment, which has grown from around 6,000 to almost 10,000 today.
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