Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film facts for kids

The Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film is a special prize given out at the Golden Globe Awards. It celebrates the best movies that are not mainly in the English language. Dick Clark Productions presents this award to films shown in theaters.

How the Award Started

This award first appeared at the 7th Golden Globe Awards in 1949. Back then, it was called Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. It became a yearly award starting in 1957. For many years, there was also a separate award for English-language films made outside the U.S.

In 1973, these two awards combined into one called Best Foreign Film. This meant any non-American film could win, no matter its language. But in 1986, the award changed again to Best Foreign Language Film. This new rule allowed American movies not in English, like Letters from Iwo Jima and Minari, to be considered.

The United Kingdom has won this award the most times, with seven films. Spain and France are also among the top winners.

What Makes a Film Eligible?

To be considered for this award, a film does not need to be shown in the United States first. The rules say that a movie must be at least 70 minutes long. Also, more than half (51%) of its talking parts must be in a language other than English. The film also needs to have been released in its home country between November 1 and December 31 before the awards. If a film couldn't be released in its home country because of censorship, it can still qualify with a one-week showing in the U.S. during that time.

Dick Clark Productions, which now organizes the Golden Globes, allows many films from one country to be submitted. This is different from the Academy Awards, which only allows one film per country each year.

Famous Winners and Their Films

Many talented directors and their films have won this award over the years. For example, Ingmar Bergman has won the most times, with six awards for movies like Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander.

Vittorio De Sica won three times for films such as Bicycle Thieves and Two Women. Claude Lelouch also won three times, including for A Man and a Woman.

Other directors who have won multiple times include Pedro Almodóvar, Michael Haneke, and Jan Troell. These wins show how many amazing films are made around the world in different languages.

Images for kids

• 

  Vittorio De Sica won thrice for Bicycle Thieves (1949), Two Women (1961), and Marriage Italian Style (1964).

• 

  Keisuke Kinoshita won for Twenty-Four Eyes (1954).

• 

  Carl Theodor Dreyer won for Ordet (1955).

• 

  King Vidor won for War and Peace (1956).

• 

  Ingmar Bergman has won the most times in this category, a total of six for Wild Strawberries (1959), The Virgin Spring (1960), Scenes from a Marriage (1975), Face to Face (1976), Autumn Sonata (1978), and Fanny and Alexander (1983).

• 

  Federico Fellini won for Juliet of the Spirits (1965).

• 

  Claude Lelouch won thrice for A Man and a Woman (1966), Live for Life (1967), and Les Misérables (1995).

• 

  Costa-Gavras won for Z (1969).

• 

  René Clément won for Rider on the Rain (1970).

• 

  Ephraim Kishon won for The Policeman (1971).

• 

  Maximilian Schell won for The Pedestrian (1973).

• 

  Jan Troell won twice for The Emigrants and The New Land (both 1972).

• 

  Édouard Molinaro won for La Cage aux Folles (1979).

• 

  Roman Polanski won for Tess (1980)]]

• 

  Richard Attenborough won for Gandhi (1982).

• 

  David Lean won for A Passage to India (1984).

• 

  Lasse Hallström won for My Life as a Dog (1987).

• 

  Giuseppe Tornatore won for Cinema Paradiso (1989).

• 

  Agnieszka Holland won Europa Europa (1990).

• 

  Régis Wargnier won for Indochine (1992).

• 

  Chen Kaige won for Farewell My Concubine (1993).

• 

  Walter Salles won for Central Station (1998).

• 

  Pedro Almodóvar won twice for All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002).

• 

  Ang Lee won for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

• 

  Danis Tanović won for No Man's Land (2001).

• 

  Alejandro Amenábar won for The Sea Inside (2004).

• 

  Clint Eastwood won for Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

• 

  Julian Schnabel won for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

• 

  Michael Haneke won twice for The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012).

• 

  Susanne Bier won for In a Better World (2010).

• 

  Asghar Farhadi won for A Separation (2011).

• 

  Paolo Sorrentino won for The Great Beauty (2013).

• 

  Andrey Zvyagintsev won for Leviathan (2014).

• 

  László Nemes won for Son of Saul (2015).

• 

  Paul Verhoeven won for Elle (2016).

• 

  Alfonso Cuarón won for Roma (2018).

• 

  Bong Joon-ho won for Parasite (2019).

• 

  Lee Isaac Chung won for Minari (2020).

• 

  Ryusuke Hamaguchi won for Drive My Car (2021).

• 

  Justine Triet won for Anatomy of a Fall (2023).

• 

  Jacques Audiard won for Emilia Perez (2024).

Directors with Multiple Wins

Nine directors have won this award more than once. This shows their amazing talent in making films that stand out.

Wins	Director
6	Ingmar Bergman
3	Vittorio De Sica
	Claude Lelouch
2	Pedro Almodóvar
	Michael Cacoyannis
	Michael Haneke
	Kurt Hoffmann
	Keisuke Kinoshita
	Jan Troell

Other Similar Awards

There are other awards that also celebrate international films:

• BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language
• Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best International Feature Film)
• Saturn Award for Best International Film

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Globo de Oro a la mejor película en lengua no inglesa para niños