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"The Farewell is an AMERICAN MOVIE" - Simu Liu

Yesterday it was reported that Awkwafina and her film The Farewell have been nominated for Golden Globes Awards.

The Asian American actress is nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and her film is up for Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Awkwafina described her “surreal” Golden Globes nomination experience.

“I would never have expected something like this to happen, especially when we were filming,” she said. “We just wanted to tell the story. So to see that it’s getting recognition and to see the news today is really awesome.”

However, some have expressed their disapproval of The Farewell‘s nomination. Critics are not arguing that The Farewell deserves to be nominated but that the film is nominated in the wrong category.

Many are highlighting that The Farewell is an American film produced by American production companies and thus should be regarded as an American drama instead,

VICE argues that the decision to place The Farewell in the foreign language category “undermines the diversity of the American audience,” considering “Chinese is the third most spoken language in the United States.”

The Farewell director Lulu Wang even described her film as “an American film” in a blog post for A24, which produced the film.

On social media Kim’s Convenience star Simu Liu backed the viewpoint, tweeting, “Hoooooold on just a sec… The Farewell is an AMERICAN MOVIE”.

Liu’s fans responded similarly. “Clearly being produced by 4 American production companies, distributed by an American distributor, having its first screening at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic category, and starring an American actress makes it a [checks notes] foreign film,” one person tweeted.

“The US doesn’t even have an official language, why do they pick English to be “not foreign”? English is the official language of many countries outside of the US, like Nigeria. So Nigerian films can’t qualify as international for the Oscars, either,” another wrote.

In related news, Awkwafina is reportedly on the path to be nominated for a historic Oscars Award.