Joy, a film about a Nigerian woman trapped in the sex trade in Austria, has been disqualified for next year’s Academy Awards, more popularly known as the Oscar.
The film will not compete due to the rules of Oscar because t two-thirds of the dialogue in Joy is in English.
Oscar rewards artistic and technical merit in the film industry.
Written and directed by Sudabeh Mortezai, the film chronicles Nigerian sex workers in Vienna, Austria and aims to shine a light on the cycle of abuse and poverty fuelling sexual slavery.
Mortezai said she hoped that "Joy", which won the best film award at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday, would encourage viewers to empathise with the trafficking victims hiding in plain sight in many cities worldwide.
Austria's selection committee found out about the news on Monday. The country's official language is German.
As was the case with Lionheart, the Academy said that Joy violated an Academy rule that mandates entries in the Best International Film Category must have "a predominantly non-English dialogue track."
The Oscars recently changed the category name from Best Foreign Language Film to Best International Film.
On Joy's disqualification, the Academy told The Hollywood Reporter, "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."
Joy, like Lionheart, bowed on Netflix to U.S. audiences after it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.
