Pakistan submitted films for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1959 and 1963.
As of 2009, one hundred different countries have submitted films for Oscar consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Although Pakistan was among the first countries to enter the competition (countries were first invited to send films in 1956; Pakistan sent its first film in 1959), they have not sent any films in the past forty-five years and they no longer have an active committee which has the power to submit films to the competition.[1] Of the one-hundred participant countries, 88 of them have submitted films in the past ten years, while 99 have submitted films in the past forty years. Pakistan is the only country to be absent for such a long time.
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film since 1956. The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Pakistan for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.
Both Pakistani submissions were musical-dramas in Urdu.
| Year (Ceremony) |
Film title used in nomination | Original title | Director | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 (32nd) |
The Day Shall Dawn | Jago Hua Savera | A. J. Kardar | Not Nominated |
| 1963 (36th) |
The Veil | Ghunghat (گھونگٹ) | Khawaja Khurshid Anwar | Not Nominated |
Pakistan's first Oscar submission, The Day Shall Dawn was very much a co-production between the two halves of what was then a geographically divided Pakistani state (now independent Pakistan and Bangladesh). The movie was filmed in Dhaka, East Pakistan (contemporary Bangladesh) by the East Pakistan Film Development Corporation [2] by a director from Lahore (in West Pakistan) [3] and scripted in the Urdu language, which is native to the West. The film, which won a major award at the Moscow International Film Festival, was about the daily lives of East Pakistani fishermen.
Pakistan's second and final Oscar submission, The Veil [4], is about the disappearance of a veiled young bride on the day she is scheduled to be married off to a rich young man.
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