Critics Choice Awards receive backlash over awarding Best Foreign Film on red carpet

The Critics Choice Awards apparently felt the Best Foreign Film category didn’t need space in its regular show and instead used the red carpet to deliver the award to the Brazilian director of “The Secret Agent.” They didn’t even give him a chance to deliver a speech.

Usually, red carpet interviews consist of hosts asking lighthearted questions to actors and directors about the excitement over the star-studded affair or who the designer is for their clothes. 

But on this occasion, the red carpet host hurriedly delivered the award to Kleber Mendonça Filho as she interviewed him during the pre-show event. As she gave him the award, she asked, “Did you have any idea?” When he responded, confused, “no,” she proceeded to say congratulations and that she loved the film before cutting the segment abruptly by excitedly ending it with “we have a lot more show, so stay put!” without allowing Mendonça Filho or producer Emilie Lesclaux, who was next to him, to thank anyone or say anything about their film. 

Is the host to blame or rather the showrunner, for such an accidental way of awarding the Best Foreign Film award? 

“This was just disrespectful,” the content creator of ideservecouture said on Instagram. “They’re here for the ceremony, they're not here to be given an award on the red carpet.” 

Wagner Moura, who stars in “The Secret Agent” and was also nominated for Best Actor for the award, remarked when he presented the Best Film award in jest, "or, as we say in Brazil, best foreign movie," no doubt in response to the earlier snub to the Brazilian film being awarded outside of the streaming show.  

Now that viewers know the context, it’s clear that Moura wanted to make a poignant remark that foreign films deserve a little more recognition than a drive-by red carpet award.