What Two of Four Academy Standards Best Picture Films Must Meet

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences attaches inclusion requirements to one award: Best Picture. A film that wants that category must submit a confidential form and meet two of four standards covering on-screen representation, creative leadership, industry access and audience development. The rules are set out on the Academy’s own standards page.

The standards attach conditions to eligibility for the industry’s top film prize, so readers following women’s advancement in film may want to know how they work. One detail is not settled by the sources reviewed here: the current deadline for the RAISE submission. The four standards are labelled A through D, and the sections below take them in that order.

Only the Best Picture category is covered

The standards apply to Best Picture consideration. According to the Academy’s standards page, every other category keeps its current eligibility requirements. The page also says that Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and International Feature films submitted for Best Picture or General Entry are prompted to take part in the process.

The standards are a condition for one category, not a rule across all of the Academy’s awards. The standards page sets out the rules as four labelled standards plus a submission step, and this article follows that order.

Two of four
A film must submit a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form and meet two of four standards to be eligible for Best Picture, according to the Academy’s standards page.

The confidential form and the two-of-four count

Eligibility starts with a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form, known as RAISE, submitted through RAISE.oscars.org. The standards page does not state a submission deadline, so the timing has to be confirmed with the Academy.

A film must meet two of the four standards. It does not need all four, and the page does not require any particular pair. Meeting a standard means satisfying at least one of the criteria listed under it. Standards A, B and C each list two or three such criteria; Standard D lists only one. The film must also complete the Best Picture Expanded Theatrical Run criteria, a separate requirement that this article does not cover.

The count reaches beyond the cast and crew. Standards C and D look at the distributor, financier or studio behind a film, so two of the four tests depend on the company as well as the people on screen and behind the camera.

Standards A and B: on-screen and crew representation

Standard A covers on-screen representation, themes and narratives. A film can meet it in one of three ways. It can feature leads or significant supporting actors from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups. It can have a general ensemble in which at least 30% of non-submitted actors come from two or more underrepresented groups. Or its main storyline can center on an underrepresented group.

In a worked example, a 30% threshold in an ensemble of ten non-submitted actors means at least three of them must come from two or more underrepresented groups.

Standard B covers creative leadership and the project team. A film can meet it with at least two creative leaders or department heads from underrepresented groups, including at least one from a racial or ethnic group. It can also meet it with at least six other key crew roles held by people from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, or with at least 30% of crew drawn from two or more underrepresented groups.

Both standards depend on the term underrepresented groups, which the Academy page defines to include women, racial or ethnic groups, LGBTQ+ people, and people with cognitive or physical disabilities or who are deaf or hard of hearing. A separate, narrower term, underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, lists specific categories such as African American, East Asian, Hispanic or Latina/e/o/x, Indigenous Peoples, Middle Eastern or North African, Pacific Islander, South Asian and Southeast Asian backgrounds.

Standards C and D: industry access and audience development

Standard C covers industry access and opportunities. A film can meet it in one of two ways. The first is paid apprenticeships or internships for underrepresented groups at the film’s distributor or financier. The second is training and work opportunities in below-the-line skill development for those groups. Standard C therefore offers fewer options than Standards A and B, which each offer three.

Standard D covers audience development. It asks the studio or film company to show multiple in-house senior executives or hired consultants from at least two underrepresented groups. Those people must work across creative and development, marketing, publicity and distribution teams, and at least one must come from a racial or ethnic group.

Taken together, the four standards span hiring for cast and crew, training, distribution and financing, and marketing. A film needs to clear only two of them, so the four tests are not a single checklist.

The standards are a condition for one category, not a rule across all of the Academy’s awards.

How the 2020 announcement phased in the rules

The CBS News report on the announcement is marked as updated September 9, 2020. It describes a phase-in. For the 94th and 95th ceremonies, films had to submit the confidential form to be eligible for Best Picture but did not have to meet specific standards.

According to the same report, the two-of-four test applied from 2024 onward.

The Academy’s current standards page does not repeat any of these dates. Its footer shows a 2026 copyright notice and nothing else on timing. The page describes the standards as they currently stand, not as they were phased in, and at least one standard has changed since 2020: the CBS report describes Standard C as requiring both of its criteria, while the current standards page requires only one of the two.

What the sources leave unresolved

One point remains open for anyone checking the rules: the submission deadline, which the standards page does not state.

The Academy’s standards page is the source for the current structure, and the CBS report is the source for the original phase-in. The RAISE portal would settle the open point, and a reader who needs the deadline for a specific ceremony should confirm it there.

Photo: Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons