There is no secret that the coronavirus is heavily impacting the filmmaking industry and the Oscar is no exception. How will the pandemic change the 93rd Academy Awards short film submission requirements? Let’s try to answer that.

Coronavirus and Oscar 2021

Although we have 10 months until the 93rd Academy Awards, the submission process starts now. First, we have to understand how the system works. The top movies play top fall film festivals as they seek buyers, audience, and media reaction. Those that play well hire publicists and marketers to craft campaigns, which can bring filmmakers and talent the kind of career recognition that only the Oscars can bring. However, we’ll focus on short films, because, generally speaking, they have a different pathway. Read below.

Short film and Oscar: The basic pathway

One of the most popular methods to get your short into the Oscar is to be accepted to a qualifying film festival. Winning an award at one of those qualifying film festivals will qualify your short film for the Oscars, which means you can now submit your film to the Academy. From this point, your film will undergo several rounds of voting for the final decision. This process may take approximately eight months. For instance, let’s suppose you are willing to submit your short film to Sundance (or any other qualifying festival from a list of around 80 festivals), which takes about 3 months until you get the final answers. Moreover, your submission can get a better chance once your film was won a prize in other film festivals. After that, you are eligible to send it over to the Academy Awards. This process will take another three months. That means we’re talking about 6-10 months of several rounds of qualification process till your short is being defined as an Oscar nominee. For better understating this procedure, explore the chart below which demonstrates a flowchart of the main options for how a short film can be accepted to the Oscar. It’s important to mention and understand that this process takes time (between 6-10 months), which means, you need to start now submitting your short in order to accomplish this pathway. However, COVID-19 prevents that by interfering and blocking the process below.

COVID-19 restricts film festivals from being Oscar’s engine

As explained and demonstrated above, film festivals constitute the main engine that drives the Academy Awards forward. However, the pandemic changed it all. This year, festivals cannot be the driving force of the Academy Awards, since many qualifying festivals are being postponed due to coronavirus social distancing restrictions. For instance, the Cannes International Film Festival management team announced that the event would be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The optional new dates are around the end of June-beginning of July 2020. Nevertheless, this is just one example of many others.

Changes in rules for eligibility regarding Oscar 2021

According to the Deadline report, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ board of governors will gather virtually soon to discuss and approve changes in rules for eligibility and other issues regarding the next Oscar show. Sources told Deadline to expect not just eligibility changes (especially in light of all the ways movies are currently debuting directly on VOD and streaming platforms such as Netflix) but also likely some surprising and significant changes regarding categories themselves. In our opinion, these changes in eligibility will significantly impact the requirements of the short film submission process. As filmmakers, we have to keep our finger on the pulse regarding those resolutions. We’ll keep you posted so stay tuned for further announcements.