Mark Johnson Returns as Oscar Foreign Language Chair as Race Gets Underway (Exclusive)

Architect of the three-stage nomination process returns to chairmanship after a year off; "Two Lives," "Child's Pose," "Boy Eating the Bird's Food" among first submissions

Producer Mark Johnson is returning to chair the committee that oversees the Oscars' controversial foreign-language process.

The group has come under fire for both for its baffling omissions over the years and for the lengths to which it now goes to avoid those omissions.

Johnson, one of the architects of the three-stage process that was instituted in the wake of the voters' failure to put the acclaimed films "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "The Edge of Heaven" and "Silent Light" on the shortlist in 2007, had to step down last year after losing his seat on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Board of Governors.

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