The Chinese Oscar Winner that Wasn’t
Wolf Totem is a spectacular film, but its soul is missing. That's just how Beijing wants it.
BY OCTOBER 14, 2015
On Oct. 8, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its list of submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, Wolf Totem wasn’t on it. The Academy’s disqualification of the Chinese-French co-production, long rumored to be the ruling Communist Party’s choice for this year’s submission, was technical — with a foreign director and three of four screenwriters also non-Chinese, the film had too much foreign creative influence to qualify as Chinese. This dashed the country’s latest, greatest hope for a Chinese Oscar winner. (Its replacement, the romantic comedy Go Away Mr. Tumor, seems a poor substitute). But even if the film had stayed in the running, an Academy award would likely still have proved elusive — for in order to be released in the world’s largest authoritarian country, Wolf Totem had to compromise the heart of its message.
