Coming as I do from a country with two official languages (and by many philosophies from a country of two official nations, not to mention others as yet without official status), I take an interest in this question of the Oscars and the Foreign Language Film category. A film from Anglophone Canada could not be entered, while French-language films from Quebec could, and are. (I believe both Le Declin de l'empire americain and Jesus de Montreal, by Denys Arcand, reached the final nominations.) I believe I'm recalling correctly that Canada effectively engaged in an atypical moment of anarchy a couple of years ago by naming as the country's official entry into the Oscar sweepstakes a very skilfully constructed film titled A Bullet in the Head (I can't remember the filmmaker's name), produced in neither official language of Canada -- produced, in fact, in no known language at all, but a language fabricated only for the movie itself. Unfortunately, the Academy didn't respond to such constructive nihilism, and failed to include the picture among the final five. (By the way, Carol, I remember that Z was nominated and won in the Foreign Language category, and may have been nominated as Best Picture too -- I recall that it was quite an exceptional case that year -- and that it circulated in subtitled version in big cities and a dubbed version (at the time a dubbing commended for high quality by comparision with other English-language versions) in smaller markets across the US.) The above is actually a digression, because what actually came to my mind was whether a film such as El Mariachi, a US production produced in a language other than English, might be eligible for nomination in the Foreign Language category, or whether it could be nominated for Best Picture. Of course, given its relation to the standardized system of Hollywood production, it would stand as much chance of winning as Beauty and the Beast did.