Oscars terminology change: What it really means for film awards and representation

When the Oscars terminology change, a set of updates to language and criteria used by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to describe eligibility, categories, and inclusion standards. Also known as Academy Awards language reform, it’s not just about swapping words—it’s about reshaping how the film industry acknowledges who gets seen, who gets counted, and who gets to tell stories. This isn’t the first time the Oscars have tweaked their rules, but this round hits differently. It’s not just about adding a new category or changing a deadline. It’s about removing outdated phrases like "foreign language film" and replacing them with "international feature film." Why? Because language shapes perception. Calling a film "foreign" implies it’s outside the norm. Calling it "international" says: this belongs here, too.

Behind this shift are real films and real people. Think of Parasite, the South Korean film that became the first non-English language movie to win Best Picture. Its win in 2020 forced the Academy to face its own biases. Then came Crazy Rich Asians, a romantic comedy that proved audiences would turn out for an all-Asian cast, breaking a 25-year Hollywood drought. These weren’t just box office wins—they were cultural milestones that made the old terms feel outdated, even offensive. The Academy didn’t make these changes because they got a memo. They did it because fans, filmmakers, and critics kept asking: why are we still talking like this?

It’s not just about names. The Oscars terminology change also ties into broader efforts to diversify voting members, update submission rules for international entries, and make sure representation isn’t just a checkbox. You’ll see this reflected in the posts below—from deep dives into global horror, how South Korean, Indonesian, and Mexican films use cultural history to scare audiences, to breakdowns of female-led action films, how Ripley and Furiosa rewrote the rules of who can be the hero. These aren’t random picks. They’re part of the same movement: cinema is changing, and the awards that celebrate it have to change with it.

What you’ll find here isn’t a list of press releases or dry policy summaries. It’s the real stories behind the headlines—the directors who fought to be seen, the actors who refused to be typecast, the studios that took risks when it wasn’t safe to. The Oscars terminology change didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because people kept making films that refused to be ignored. And now, the awards are finally catching up.