THE ROAD TO OSCAR PROJECT: THE CONFIGURATION OF MALAYSIAN CINEMA FILM NARRATIVE & CULTURAL IDENTITY FOR ‘OSCAR CINEMA’

The Road to Oscar project, an action plan entrusted to FINAS by the Minister of Communications and Multimedia at a press conference on 16 June 2020. The main objective is to ensure that Malaysian Cinema succeeds in the Academy Award or Oscar in the International Feature Film Award category. According to Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah (Minister of Communications and Multimedia), a roadmap or blueprint of patriotism that upholds the Malay culture, in line with the country's creative policy, government policy and broadcasting ethics must be designed. The film Roh (2019) which was inspired by the Japanese film, Onibaba (1964), was inspired into the space and time of the Malay world theme through the myths of the Malay world community, decided by the FINAS Film Selection Committee (comprising professional and experienced local film industry players), representing Cinema Malaysia's to the 93rd Academy Award (April 2021). The selection has gone through a detailed evaluation process based on Oscar film criteria. Even so, Roh did not manage to be shortlisted (12 best). Therefore, through a qualitative method of content analysis, this study will focus on the discussion regards to the characterisation elements of cinematic narrative storytelling framework, that configured by Malaysian cultural identity with the look and feel of Oscar. This study will analyse two comparative samples, Roh (2020) and Parasite (2019, South Korea) - the winner of 92nd Best International Feature Film Award (2019).