The 2026 awards season is officially underway, and already, the Critics Choice Awards have stirred up some controversy over the “unbelievably disrespectful” way that some of the night’s biggest awards were presented.
From the Oscars to the Grammys, it’s customary for some of the awards to be presented before the show actually begins. This ensures that the live broadcast doesn’t run too long. However, many viewers called out the frankly bizarre way the award for Best Foreign Language Film was presented before the Critics Choice ceremony this year.
If you haven’t been following, the Best Foreign Language Film category this year had some tough competition. The movies up for the award were It Was Just an Accident, Left-Handed Girl, No Other Choice, The Secret Agent, Sirat, and Belén, most of which have been pretty buzzy in the lead-up to awards season — particularly The Secret Agent, which won.
Despite the excitement surrounding The Secret Agent — a Latin American film primarily in Portuguese — the film’s director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, was unable to properly celebrate the win. He was abruptly presented with the award midway through an interview on the red carpet.
You can watch the clip here, but I think we can all agree that it played out very awkwardly. Kleber looked totally stunned, and he barely had any time to process what was happening before the reporter suddenly cut to commercials.
On X, the reactions have been intense, with people suggesting that the chaotic manner in which the award was presented was “insulting” to the filmmakers, particularly considering how major that category is within the wider context of the awards race.
To make matters worse, this wasn’t the only award that was handed out on the red carpet, either, meaning that tons of other winners were deprived of a proper moment to celebrate in the spotlight — including Ryan Coogler, whose win for Best Original Screenplay for Sinners was not televised.
So, what do you make of this? LMK in the comments.
