Oscars season is here – but why is Australia so late to the world’s best films?

Awards heavy-hitter Anatomy of a Fall has been out in France since August and the US since October – and it finally lands in Australia on Thursday. Photograph: AP

The 2024 Oscar nominations have landed – but if you live in Australia, you probably still haven’t seen many of the year’s biggest films.

Best picture nominee Anatomy of a Fall which, despite being out in its native France since August and the US since October, doesn’t open in Australia until Thursday. Also up for the top gong is The Zone of Interest, which won’t be released here until 22 February. Screenplay contender May December, meanwhile, won’t hit our screens until 1 February despite the fact it’s already streaming on Netflix abroad.

And The Holdovers – up for five awards including best picture – didn’t make it to Australian cinemas until 11 January, which would have been fine if it wasn’t Christmas-themed.

But delayed release dates are par for the course for filmgoers in Australia – particularly around awards season.

“It’s been like that forever,” says Alexei Toliopoulos, a film podcaster and self-described “professional film lover”. “We’re pretty close to day-in-day worldwide releases for big blockbusters,” he says, but “prestige pictures, or more arthouse independent cinema” still suffer big release delays.

So why do those Oscar-baiting flicks take longer to screen here when you can see the likes of Barbie and Aquaman 2 within a few days of American audiences?

Tentpoles such as Barbie are often released simultaneously worldwide – but ‘independent film is a more volatile business’. Photograph: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures/AP

“Independent film is a more challenging and volatile business – that’s what impacts the later release dates here in Australia,” says Jessica Ellicott, former head of programming at Sydney cinema Golden Age, who now freelances for independent cinema distributor Transmission Films.

Occasionally, there are contractual stipulations that require a film to be released in the US before other territories. But more often it’s to do with money.

With multimillion-dollar global marketing campaigns, blockbusters such as Barbie and Wonka – and their heavyweight film studios – have local distribution partnerships locked in around the world long before the film’s release. But independent flicks must pick up a local distributor on a film-by-film basis – and distributors, investing heavily in the rights, want a release date that will get the most bums on seats. “And there’s a lot of factors that contribute to that,” says Ellicott.

A big consideration – especially at this time of year – is simply finding space in the schedule for movie theatres. December and January are school holidays in Australia, which means kids’ films and family friendly blockbusters are prioritised over more artsy fare about concentration camps (The Zone of Interest) and paedophilia (May December).

Distributors also have to balance their own release schedule. Take May December, which is being released in Australia by Transmission Films. It hit screens on 17 November in the US, but Transmission already had The Royal Hotel releasing on 23 November, then two more big releases (Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, and One Life starring Anthony Hopkins) within the following month.

“So the delayed release of May December, I would say, is more to do with not cannibalising your own films and giving your own films … enough time to succeed,” says Ellicott. Distributors are risking audiences turning to illegal streams instead – but “[age] 50+ females are still the majority of [cinema] ticket purchasers – and they’re not the ones pirating films”.

Even in the US, it’s important to get the timing right. Ellicott points to Ferrari, a prestige biopic from director Michael Mann that was ultimately snubbed at the Oscars despite early predictions. Ferrari performed badly at the US box office, Ellicott says, partly because it was competing with Poor Things and Napoleon in “too crowded a market”.

The biopic Ferrari was widely tipped as an awards contender – though it ultimately under-performed because it came out in ‘too crowded a market’. Photograph: Lorenzo Sisti/AP

Australian distributors may also delay a release for strategic reasons. Waiting to see how a film performs in the US can help them predict which Australian demographics to market to – and help build the film’s profile too.

“It’s sometimes a bit safer to release [a film] after it’s come out in the States and has a bit of hype behind it,” says Felix Hubble of independent Australian distributor Static Vision.

“So much of current film culture is online, so that [coverage] can help.”

And then there’s the small but crucial factor of workload: distributors in Australia are often small businesses with small teams to match, Ellicott says, “and they can only work on one release at a time”.

“It can be hard when it feels like you’re on the other side of the world from where everything is happening,” says Toliopoulos. But Australian audiences are offered one advantage over many other countries: multiple big-draw film festivals.

“[May December] had already had really big sessions in Australia before it played anywhere in America. I think it played almost every single [major] film festival in Australia [mid] last year ... So we were lucky – we got to see [it] before most of the rest of the world.”