The Academy Award longlist for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the earliest indicators that the film awards season is well and truly imminent. 76 films have been submitted for consideration, including first time entries from Saudi Arabia and Montenegro. Over the next few months, this will be cut down to five shortlisted nominees, one of which will earn its director and producers statuettes on March 6th. However, while this year's list shows some small advances, it has already ignited further discussion about what is often deemed the Oscar's most controversial category.

How it works: every year, eligible countries submit a single film to the Academy for consideration. Therein lies two problems.

The first is what defines an 'eligible' country. Films from Palestine, for example, have frequently faced challenges when submitted, such as Divine Intervention being disqualified in 2002 as Academy chose not to recognise the country. This year marks the first time in a half century 'Palestine' has been listed as the country of origin for the nomination, as opposed to Palestinian Authority or Territories. Similarly, Lebanon's The Attack - which has already proven an international hit - has been denied recognition on the longlist as it was rejected by the Lebanese selection committee for focusing on Israeli settings and characters.

There has also been controversy when attempting to define eligibility on language criteria. 2005's Caché, to take a high-profile example, was from Austrian director Michael Haneke but filmed in France. It was disqualified when Austria attempted to submit it as their nomination as it wasn't shot in the country's main language. 

Luckily, this rule has since been changed, and a film is no longer required to be in a country's first language. This has allowed films from the UK (Metro Manila) and Australia (The Rocket) to make the longlist this year, as they're in languages other than English.

One country, one film...

As for the 'one country, one film' rule, this has regularly been cited as an indicator of the category's 'outdated' rules. Several high-profile films have been denied a nomination for this reason. In the case of Pedro Almodovar's 2002 critical and commercial hit Talk To Her, the Academy deemed it worthy of a Best Screenplay award. Since Spain opted to go with another film, though, Talk to Her was denied even a nomination in the prestigious foreign language category where it surely had a fighting chance. Appropriately, the chosen Spanish nominee didn't even make the shortlist.

This year, a couple of notable absences are already kickstarting a furore: Cannes winner Blue is the Warmest Colour has been 'snubbed' by France (although it went on wide release after the eligibility period had elapsed, meaning it could be submitted for the 2015 awards), as has India's favourite The Lunchbox. Japan has also been criticised for ignoring the internationally acclaimed Like Father, Like Son in favour of the lesser known or celebrated The Great Passage.

Why do these films need the gratification of the Oscars, anyway? It has been often proven that Oscar attention increases audience awareness and commercial prospects for any given film. While theoretically some of these could be recognised in other areas, the reality is that the Academy only rarely chooses to celebrate foreign language films outside of their dedicated category. 

Speaking to Deadline, Mark Johnson of the Foreign Language Committee indicates some change is imminent. “I think it’s time," he observes. "We made some radical changes several years ago... and I think we should probably re-examine a couple of key tenets of this category… ‘what about a couple of wild cards? Or what about picking festival winners that for some reason weren’t submitted?’, but we’re going to radically look at that."

However, Johnson also says "I want to be careful about looking at the movies from Japan and India ….We can’t meddle in it. All we can do is evaluate whether or not the submitting committee is a good representation of the filmmaking community (in that country)." 

It's up to the Academy how things will progress from here. For now, check out this year's longlist here.