How to win an Oscar? Sex, spin and very dirty tricks

Few today have heard of the 1997 Dutch movie Character, but it won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. So did Antonia’s Line (1995). At the beginning of the Noughties, the Netherlands produced further Oscar hits, earning nominations for dramas Twin Sisters (2002) and Zus & Zo (2001). Haven’t heard of those either? This streak was the product of a bit of Dutch film industry game-playing – having realised that the only Academy members with the time and inclination to actually watch international Oscar contenders tended to be at the end of their careers, the Dutch exclusively pushed tasteful, middlebrow dramas for consideration.

“In those days, [Academy voters] were all retirees, all older people,” says Claudia Landsberger, who was then the head of Dutch movie promotion