And the Oscar goes to

The 82^nd Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles on 7 March. The awarding of the film prize was an exciting affair for Austria again this year, with three of our countrymen in the race. The native Viennese Christoph Waltz was nominated Best Supporting Actor for his role as unscrupulous SS officer Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds". Austrian director Michael Haneke was amongst the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film with Germany's "The White Ribbon" and Christian Berger for Best Cinematography for the same film.

Though the film "Revanche" by Götz Spielmann missed out on a foreign picture Oscar last year, we can congratulate an Austrian again this year: Christoph Waltz received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

We last celebrated an Oscar back in 2008. "The Counterfeiters", directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, brought home the prize for the best foreign language film. With this year's Oscar, Austria is celebrating yet another success.

In the history of the Academy Awards, there have so far been 116 nominations for Austria. 33 (exiled or expat) Austrians have actually held the coveted statue in their hands. The most famous of them all was Billy Wilder. The director, who fled from the Nazis to the USA, received six Oscars and an award for his life's work. The award for best actor went to Maximilian Schell for "Judgment at Nuremburg" (1961) and Paul Muni for "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936).