The European Commission welcomed the success of 'The Artist' and 'The Iron Lady', both European films, at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood celebrated on 26 of February. This year, nine nominated films received support from the European Union's MEDIA programme for cinema.

The Artist, a European film which received support of the European Union's MEDIA programme for cinema, scooped the big prizes for Best Picture, Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), Costume Design (Mark Bridges) and Best Music (Ludovic Bource) at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. The Iron Lady, a UK-French co-production which received €1.5 million in distribution support to encourage cinemas to screen the film outside the country, it collected the statuettes for Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and Best Makeup (Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland).

In addition, seven other EU-backed films were also nominated for Oscars: 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (Tomas Alfredson, UK/France/Germany), nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress in a supporting role, and Best Original Score, was awarded €300,000; 'Albert Nobbs' (Rodrigo García, UK/Ireland), nominated for Best Actress and Best Actress in a supporting role, received €130,000; 'A Cat in Paris' (Alain Gagnol, Jean-Loup Felicioli, France/Belgium/Netherlands/Switzerland), nominated for Best Animation Film, got €122,000, 'Chico and Rita' (Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, Spain/UK), nominated for Best Animation Film, was awarded €3,000; 'Bullhead' (Michaël R. Roskam, Belgium), nominated for Best Foreign Language film, received €20,000; 'Jane Eyre' (Cary Joji Fukunaga, United Kingdom/USA), nominated for Costume Design, was awarded €450,000; 'Pina' (Wim Wenders, Germany/France/UK), nominated for Documentary feature, received €550,000.

MEDIA is the 2007-2013 EU Programme which supports the European film industry and the audiovisual sector. The Commission has proposed a budget of €1.8 billion for Creative Europe in November 2011, the proposed culture programme for the 2014-2020 period. The amount of funding distributors receive from the MEDIA fund is based on various criteria including previous ticket sales for non-national films.