Frequent readers of SpoutBlog know that I am head-over-heels in love Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light, a drama set in a Mexican Mennonite community and shot entirely in the almost-lost German dialect, Plautdeitsch. So of course, I was overjoyed to get a press release last night saying that the film had been deemed eligible as Mexico’s submission for the Foreign Language Oscar.

But then I remembered a scandal a couple of years back, involving an Italian film called Private. At the time, the Academy deemed Private ineligible for the Foreign Language category, because the film was shot in a language (Arabic) other than the primary language of its submitting country, and even after Italy protested, AMPAS said they had no intention of changing the rule. “At this point, we don’t foresee any discussions about this issue,” an Academy spokeswoman told Anthony Kaufmann for indieWIRE. “We like to see the countries represented in the films.”

Funnily enough, according to a press release I dug up on Oscars.org, the Academy went on to change that rule the very next year.

Private is actually referenced as the impetus for the change in the release:

So long as the dominant language is not English, a picture from any country may be in any language or combination of languages.

“That may sound like a profound change,” the Academy’s executive director Bruce Davis said, “but it actually addresses a situation that has cropped up only once before in our history, and may not arise again this century. Last year the Italians wanted to submit a picture that was clearly made by Italian artists, and which qualified for the category in every other way except one: there was no Italian language in it. All the dialogue was in Middle Eastern languages.

“The rules clearly prohibited that, but the situation didn’t seem fair to us. So if the Taiwanese want to send us a picture with exclusively Portuguese dialogue this year, we’re ready for them.”

And here we are, one year later with another once-in-a-century situation. If any film fits that classification, it’s Silent Light (my crush on this film is clearly out of control. Shoot me now.)