Can foreign-language films ever win over Hollywood?

Entertainment Live: When South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho accepted the Golden Globe for best foreign language film for his widely hailed “Parasite,” he urged moviegoers to “overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles.”

“You will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” he promised, reopening a debate that has long plagued Hollywood can non-English films ever break into the US mainstream?

For many, the subtitle barrier is more than an inch tall. It requires you to focus on the bottom of the screen, meaning you may miss key visuals. Others, however, say that subtitles invite increased focus on a film.

Fredell Pogodin a veteran publicist who has worked to promote hundreds of movies, including the Oscar-winning foreign films “Roma,” “Mediterraneo” and “Koyla” says the obstacle is not just the language; it’s the content.

“Parasite” follows one down-and-out Seoul family as they gradually insert themselves into the lives of a wealthy clan, a process that ends in tragedy. Pogodin, who is now retired, says Oscar campaigns are, however, not generally built around everyday audiences they are constructed around critical acclaim, and film festival hype.

Justin Chang, a film critic for the Los Angeles Times, wrote that with his comment at the Globes, Bong “seemed to be rebuking the cultural myopia of Hollywood itself, which reserves special prizes each year for movies shot in countries outside the US and in languages other than English.”

Dhaka 04 February (campuslive24.com)//az

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