When the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929 to honor films released in 1927–28, there was no separate category for foreign language films. Between 1947 and 1955, the Academy presented &lt;a href="Academy%20Honorary%20Award"&gt;Special/Honorary Awards&lt;/a&gt; to the best foreign language films released in the United States. These awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no award was given in 1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the 1956 Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.