Here Are The Films That Got Disqualified From The Oscars 2020 Race

What doesn't come as a major shock but a little surprise is how Austria's entry into the Oscars 2020 race called Joy has now been disqualified from the international films category. Apart from that film, there is Nigeria's entry called Lionheart that has also been disqualified from the race.

Rules state that for a film to participate, it should have a predominantly non-English dialogue track but a review found out that two-thirds of the Austrian film is English. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Austrian selection committee was notified of the Academy's verdict Monday morning.

Joy, which centers on Nigerian sex workers in Vienna, premiered Sept. 3, 2018, at the 2018 Venice Film Festival en route to a Jan. 18, 2019 theatrical release in Austria and a May 24, 2019, American debut on Netflix (which is also the distributor of Lionheart). It currently stands at 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Prior to Joy, Austria had submitted 42 films for consideration for the award that, until April 2019, was known as the best foreign-language film. Two, 2007's The Counterfeiters and 2012's Amour, went on to wins; two others, 1986's '38 — Vienna Before the Fall and 2008's Revanche, settled for nominations; and one, 2005's Cache, was disqualified. The cache was deemed ineligible not because it was found to be predominantly in English, but because it is predominantly in a different language other than the official language of the submitting country, namely French. At the time, that was against the rules.

The Academy responded to an inquiry from The Hollywood Reporter about Joy with the following statement: "As we do every year, the Academy is in the process of reviewing the films submitted for the International Feature Film category to determine whether they meet our eligibility rules. The film Joy, submitted by Austria, was just reviewed and is ineligible because only 33% of the dialogue is non-English."