UU professor Giovanna Fossati votes in the Oscars

When the UU professor and Oscar voter, Giovanna Fossati, mentions Point Break as one of her favourite movies of all time, it feels like the icing on the cake of what has already been a delightful conversation. The film, starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, also holds a special place in my heart. I was instantly hooked the first time I saw it.

I met Fossati the day before she was supposed to cast her Oscar vote. But first, she would pay a visit to the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, where she worked for years as its chief curator and director of Collections & Knowledge Sharing.

At the end of 2024, she left Eye and the University of Amsterdam for a professorship in Media Heritage, Technology & Culture at Utrecht University. “I really enjoyed my time in Amsterdam, but I also love new challenges.”

“My love of film began in that packed cinema in Milan”

Fossati grew up in a family of film buffs. Her parents watched both arthouse films and major blockbusters, giving her a broad cinematic upbringing.

Star Wars is one of the first films she remembers. “I can still picture myself sitting on the floor in a packed cinema in Milan. I was seven years old. That's how I fell in love with cinema. It opened up completely new universes.”

Science fiction remained one of her favourite genres, but she also has a soft spot for zombie and vampire films, and stories that depict an apocalyptic worldview. “Those films can be very dark, but sometimes surprisingly positive too. They show that there are always more possibilities than the world around you.”

"Fortunately, I can switch off the scientist in me when I’m in the movie theatre"

In the early 1990s, Fossati studied Film Studies at the University of Bologna. For a moment, she feared that analysing films would spoil her enjoyment of them. “Fortunately, that never happened,” she says. “To this day, I can still simply enjoy a movie. I actually love going to the cinema purely as a spectator and not as a scholar. I can switch off that side of me.”

Fossati’s research focuses on film and media heritage. For over twenty years, she has been working on the preservation, restoration and accessibility of films. She also researches non-Western cinema and films that reflect on cinema itself, such as Hugo, by Martin Scorsese, which won 5 Oscars in 2012 and includes archive material from the Eye Film Museum, amongst other sources.

Photo: Claudy op den Kamp

“Film preservation is essential,” explains Fossati. “But the general public isn’t really aware of that. Filmmakers hardly give it a thought either. Since the 1990s, film studios have shown greater interest in archives, but their focus remains on major titles. That’s why I try to draw attention to film preservation among major studios and also at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”

And that's how the Academy asked Fossati to become a member, and thereby help decide who wins the Oscars. The honourable invitation came in 2021. By this time, Fossati already had many contacts in Hollywood. None other than Martin Scorsese wrote the foreword to her book Fantasia of Colour in Early Cinema.

Please find a cinematic impression of the book below:

Even so, she had to be officially nominated by two Academy members. “One day, I received an email from two close colleagues asking if they could nominate me. That was actually quite unexpected,” she laughs.

Fossati was admitted to the Academy, which now has around 10,000 members, following an assessment process. Membership is for life. As a result, a relatively large number of older, predominantly white American men exert a significant influence over the Oscars.

“In recent years, the membership has become increasingly diverse in terms of nationality, age, professional and cultural background,” notes Fossati. “And that is reflected in the choices they make. Good examples this year are the films The Secret Agent, a personal favourite of mine, and Sinners.”

‘A single scene can be enough to make a film unforgettable’

In practice, voting for the Oscars means watching many movies. The Academy divides the submissions among different viewing groups so that each film is assessed by a certain number of members. The voting process itself consists of two rounds. In the first round, members vote for the nominees in a certain number of categories. After that, all members vote for the final winners in all categories.

Fossati also watches other films that pique her curiosity. “Thanks to the Oscars, I discover films from countries and regions I would otherwise be less likely to encounter. It’s not always the ‘usual suspects’ who have already won awards at Cannes or Venice. Sometimes they are relatively obscure films that never reach the general public. As a researcher and lecturer, this interests me. I work with a global approach to film and film heritage. For me, making movies is about teamwork, and sometimes a single scene can be enough to make it unforgettable.”

‘Walking to the theatre? That was out of the question’

Fossati often mentions the Oscars in her lectures to engage her students. It certainly helps that she has attended the ceremony herself once. “I was selected in a ticket draw in 2024. At first I hesitated, but my seventeen-year-old daughter said: ‘Mum, you have to do this.’”

So, they went together. It turned out to be a special experience. “I already knew quite a few people through my work, so it felt more familiar than I’d expected. Besides, it’s so much fun to walk down the red carpet with your daughter, sit in the same auditorium as Emma Stone, and wash your hands in the loo next to Sissy Spacek.”

Giovanna Fossati and her daughter. Photo: Giovanna Fossati

At the same time, Fossati also acknowledges the absurdity of the event. “We booked a hotel right next to the Dolby Theatre because I just wanted to walk there. But when I mentioned that to the Academy, they said: ‘Going there on foot? You can't do that!’ Everyone must arrive by car. In the end, we were picked up in a golf buggy to cover a distance of three hundred metres. My daughter and I sat in the back, whilst people stood watching us from the side as if we were VIPs.”

This year, Fossati will be staying at home during the ceremony. Voting for the Oscars is nice, but ultimately, what matters most to her is discovering and preserving unique films. “Which film has moved me the most, and which one do I want future generations to think, just as I did with Point Break, ‘I definitely want to see this at least twenty more times’?”

Strange Days (1995) is far less well-known and isn’t available on streaming platforms. The film is set around the turn of the millennium and has a dystopian atmosphere. In my view, it’s an underrated film.

Finally, Nomadland (2020) by Chloé Zhao. This is one of the few movies on my list to have won multiple Oscars. It is a fictional film with a strong documentary feel, depicting the lives of people who are often overlooked.”