By Crystal Justine
When you win an award at a globally recognized, prestigious event, it should come with a sense of pride and recognition. That is not what happened at the 2026 Critics Choice Awards this past weekend.
Filmmaking is a daunting, years-long process. From writing and securing funding to pre-production, filming, and the relentless cycle of marketing and press, creators run a gauntlet to bring a piece of themselves to the big screen. When a foreign film earns awards recognition, it’s supposed to validate that effort, especially an industry dominated by English language films.
This year’s Critics Choice nominees for Best Foreign Language Film were Belén (Argentina), No Other Choice (Korea), The Secret Agent (Brazil), Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan), Sirāt (Spain), and It Was Just An Accident (France). Cinema is a global language in itself. Film allows audiences to see through different eyes, hear voices they may never encounter, and experience lives far outside their own.
Winning Best Foreign Language Film should be a major achievement. Yet it certainly didn’t appear that way for The Secret Agent director Kleber Mendonça Filho, due to the bizarre and dismissive nature in which the award was presented.
The award was not presented onstage. The audience never saw the nominees acknowledged. The winner was never addressed in front of their peers. Instead, the award was handed out on the red carpet, before the ceremony even began. As Mendonça Filho smiled for interviews, he was abruptly told his film had won and handed the statue. His surprise was evident—and justified.
Why did the Critics Choice Awards decide this category wasn’t worthy of the main stage? Why did Page Six publish a “full list” of nominees and winners, while omitting the Best Foreign Language Film category entirely? We don’t have definitive answers. But in the current state of the United States, the world, mainstream media, and an increasingly monopolized film industry, uncomfortable possibilities come to mind.
Every nominee in this category is a winner. But timing, visibility, and respect matter—especially in creative spaces where art is subjective. Whether you’re a dedicated cinephile or a casual moviegoer, take the time to seek out these foreign films. The Critics Choice Awards may not have deemed them worthy of their airtime, but each of these remarkable works is worth far more than the bias and disrespect of an awards show that failed to show up for cinema on a global scale.
