With one week to go before the deadline for submitting entries to the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category, 70 countries have announced their choices for this year’s race. The Academy won’t announce the official lineup until later in the year and won’t be putting links to the films into a special members-only virtual screening room until Oct. 10, but the category is already shaping up to be strongly political this year.
So far, entries include a number of films dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those include Israel’s entry, “The Sea,” which deals with a young Palestinian boy trying to see the sea for the first time; when it became the Israeli selection by winning the top prize at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, the government slammed the selection and threatened to withdraw funding from the Ophirs.
Tunisia, meanwhile, has submitted “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which dramatizes a phone call to emergency services from a 5-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car with dead family members; Jordan has entered “All That’s Left of You,” about a confrontation between a Palestinian teen protester and Israeli soldiers; and Palestine has gone with “Palestine 36,” a historical drama about the region’s colonial past.
Other entries deal with climate change (Australia, North Macedonia), fascism and dictatorships (Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, Paraguay, Sweden), LGBTQ issues (Chile, the Czech Republic) and the war in Ukraine (Denmark, Ireland, Ukraine). And France’s entry, “It Was Just an Accident” from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes for its wrenching look at the physical and emotional residue of state-sponsored torture.
So far, the submissions include more than 20 films from female directors and about a dozen documentaries. To be eligible, a film must have been released in its home country between Oct. 1, 2024 and Sept. 30, 2025 and must have predominantly non-English dialogue. Each country is allowed to submit a single film, which must be chosen by a selection committee approved by the Academy.
TheWrap has compiled a list of the announced entries, with links to trailers when available. Note: These films have been announced but have not necessarily been vetted by the Academy to determine their eligibility. It’s likely that some of them will be deemed ineligible and will not be included when Academy voters are given their lists of required viewing in late October, and again when the final list of qualifying films is released closer to the end of the year.
In recent years, the international category has typically contained between 85 and 93 films. TheWrap will update this list as additional films are added, and will remove films that don’t qualify once the viewing assignments go out.
ALBANIA
“Luna Park,” Florenc Papas
A coming-of-age drama set amid the civil unrest and economic collapse in Albania in the late 1990s, “Luna Park” is the second feature for Papas. In a story that the director has said was inspired by events from his own childhood, a young man and his single mother flee the country in search of a better and safer life in Greece.
Subtitled trailer
ARMENIA
“My Armenian Phantoms,” Tamara Stepanyan
Stepanyan’s film is a highly personal documentary about her life in cinema, which began when she appeared in a film at the age of 7, and her late father’s career as an actor. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
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AUSTRALIA
“The Wolves Always Come Out at Night,” Gabrielle Brady
The second feature from director Brady mixes fiction and nonfiction techniques to tell the story of a Mongolian couple who are forced to move to the city after climate change makes their nomadic lifestyle as shepherds unsustainable. The Australian selection committee was unanimous in its choice of the film, which it called “a significant and brilliantly crafted feature film that everyone in the committee regarded as requisite cinema viewing.”
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AUSTRIA
“Peacock,” Bernhard Wenger
The feature debut of Wenger is a comedy starring Albrecht Schuch (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) as a man who rents himself out as a companion-for-hire for any and all occasions. The film won the Best First Feature award at the Stockholm International Film Festival and landed a U.S. distribution deal with Oscilloscope.
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AZERBAIJAN
“Taghiyev: Oil,” Zaur Gasimli
This historical drama is the first in a series of planned films about the life of Azerbaijani magnate and philanthropist Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, a major figure in the country from the middle of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th. Filming reportedly took place over a five-year period.
Trailer (no English subtitles)
BELGIUM
“Young Mothers,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
Films by the Dardenne brothers have represented Belgium in the Oscars international race five times since 1999 – but despite winning two Palme d’Ors and acquiring a reputation as formidable auteurs, they’ve never had a film nominated or even shortlisted. Their latest work is another socio-realist drama, this one about a group of young mothers who live together in a shelter. It won the screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
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BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
“Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny,” Jasmila Žbanić
This biographical documentary tells the story of Emerik Blum, a businessman who founded the company Energoinvest and pioneered a democratic management style that gave workers a say in how the company was run. It’s the third film by Žbanić to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Oscars; she previously directed one of the country’s two nominated films, the 2020 drama “Quo Vadis, Aida?”
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BRAZIL
“The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho
A year after winning the international Oscar for “I’m Still Here,” Brazil has submitted another film set during the country’s military dictatorship of the 1970s – but “The Secret Agent” is less a political film than a quiet thriller about a former teacher who’s hiding from hitmen and exploring his past. Mendonça Filho’s previous films “Neighbouring Sounds” and “Pictures of Ghosts” were the Brazilian Oscar entries in 2013 and 2023, respectively.
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BULGARIA
“Tarika,” Milko Lazarov
Director Lazarov draws from folk tales and magical realism in this film about a rural father who must protect his daughter from ignorant and superstitious villagers when she’s ostracized after developing a bone condition. The film premiered at the London Film Festival in 2024.
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CAMBODIA
“Tenement,” Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea
A horror film in which a young woman moves into the apartment building where her late mother used to live, “Tenement” nods to both personal and societal trauma. The film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024 and was released in Cambodia in November of that year.
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CANADA
“The Things You Kill,” Alireza Khatam
Canada’s entry is a case study in how international a single film can be: It’s a Turkish-language mystery set in the United States and written and directed by a filmmaker who was born in Iran and now lives in Canada. Turkish actor Ekin Koç stars as a university professor who hires a gardener to avenge the suspicious death of his mother.
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CHILE
“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Diego Céspedes
The feature debut of writer-director Céspedes, this film is set in a remote Chilean mining town, where a young girl in a transgender commune must fight prejudice and fear when an unknown illness begins to spread. The film won the top award in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where the jury called it “raw and powerful and yet funny and wild.”
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COLOMBIA
“A Poet,” Simon Mesa Soto
The runner-up to “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” in the Un Certain Regard section, “A Poet” is a black comedy about the rocky friendship between an aging, unsuccessful poet and a working-class teenager. 1-2 Special will be releasing the film in the U.S.
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COSTA RICA
“The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener,” Juan Manuel Fernández
This examination of the case in which a Catholic priest was convicted of sexual abuse is the first documentary to be submitted to the Oscars by Costa Rica. Director Manuel Fernández shot the film over a period of six years and focused on two men who said they were abused by the priest when they were children.
CROATIA
“Fiume o morte!” Igor Bezinović
A documentary about the World War I occupation of the city of Fiume by Gabriele d’Annunzio could be straightforward and scholarly, but Bezinović gives it a spin in this docudrama heavy on reenactments and man-on-the-street interviews with citizens who don’t remember the would-be dictator. The director has called it “a history lesson but retold in a fun way.”
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CZECH REPUBLIC
“I’m Not Everything I Want to Be,” Klara Tasovská
The first documentary ever submitted by the Czech Republic, “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be” tells the story of Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, who began photographing the clients of an underground gay bar in Prague in the mid 1980s but couldn’t publish until 2008. Director Tasovská composed the film from Jarcovjáková’s photos, diaries and voiceover narration.
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DENMARK
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” David Borenstein
Another documentary in a year long on them, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” was shot by a Russian teacher, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, to chronicle the state’s attempts to justify the invasion of Ukraine in schools. After passing his footage to director Borenstein, Talankin left Russia. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“Pepe,” Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias
Almost certainly the first Oscar-eligible film to be narrated by the ghost of a hippopotamus, “Pepe” is an unclassifiable fantasia based around the musings of a hippo that was taken from Africa to the private zoo of drug lord Pablo Escobar. It has been on the festival circuit since premiering in early 2024 in Berlin, where de Los Santos Arias won the best director award.
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ECUADOR
“Chuzalongo,” Diego Ortuño
Folk tales meet modern horrors in this film based on the Andean legend of “El Chuzalongo,” a mysterious monster who assaults women. Bruno Odar plays a priest who investigates the killings of women but must also deal with violence toward indigenous people in the area. “Chuzalongo” was the highest-grossing Ecuadorian film of 2024.
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EGYPT
“Happy Birthday,” Sarah Goher
The social hierarchy in Cairo takes center stage in “Happy Birthday,” which stars Doha Ramadan as an 8-year-old maid who is determined to throw a party for the daughter of her employer. The film, Goher’s directorial debut, premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Best International Narrative Feature Award.
ESTONIA
“Rolling Papers,” Meel Paliale
A disaffected 20-year-old clerk in Tallinn begins to change his outlook when he meets a young dreamer in what writer-director-editor-composer Paliale says is “a film about young people who don’t know what to do with their lives.” “Rolling Papers” won the audience award in the International Youth Competition section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
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FINLAND
“100 Litres of Gold,” Teemu Nikki
The art of brewing the Finnish ale called sahti is at the heart of this black comedy about a pair of sisters who whip up the titular 100 liters for their sister’s wedding, then drink it all and must find a way to quickly replace it. The two leads were originally written as men, but director Nikki changed their genders after seeing actresses Elina Knihtilä and Pirjo Lonka in a play.
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FRANCE
“It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
The Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “It Was Just an Accident” is a searing drama in which a former political prisoner in Iran kidnaps a mechanic he believes was the intelligence officer who tortured him in prison years earlier. Panahi, who himself had been imprisoned for directing work critical of the Islamic Republic, made the film secretly with a French production company, which had enough creative input to qualify it for submission by that country. The French selection committee chose the film from a shortlist that also included Richard Linklater’s Godard tribute “Nouvelle Vague” and Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life.” Neon will release the movie in the U.S.
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GEORGIA
“Panopticon,” George Sikharulidze
Newcomer Data Chachua plays a conflicted young man whose parents have left him to fend for himself in this coming-of-age story that mixes religion, sexuality, right-wing politics and the concept that we’re all being watched constantly (which gives the film its title). It premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the summer of 2024.
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GERMANY
“Sound of Falling,” Mascha Schilinski
Writer-director Schilinski won the Jury Prize in Cannes for the generation-spanning drama set on a farm in the Altmark region of Germany. The film focuses on four young women at intervals over the course of a century, with 1,400 girls auditioning for the four roles during a casting process that lasted for a year.
Trailer (no English subtitles)
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GREENLAND
“Walls—Akinni Inuk,” Sofie Rørdam and Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg
This rare submission from Greenland is a documentary about Ruth Mikaelsen Jerimiassen, who became friends with codirector Skydsbjerg while serving an indefinite prison sentence for attempted murder. Greenland has only entered the Oscar race three times, with the previous submissions coming in 2010 and 2012. It received a special ruling from the Academy to submit films in the international category even though it is an autonomous territory of Denmark rather than an independent country.
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HAITI
“Kidnapping Inc.,” Bruno Mourral
Mourral’s directorial debut is a comedic thriller about a pair of hapless gangsters who are tasked with transporting the kidnapped son of a local politician. The film was originally submitted to the Oscars last year but did not qualify.
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HUNGARY
“Orphan,” László Nemes
The first time Nemes directed a feature, the film was 2015’s “Son of Saul,” one of two Hungarian films that has won the international Oscar. His new film, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, focuses on a young boy in post-World War II Hungary and takes place largely around the 1957 uprising against the communist regime; it has its roots in Nemes’ father’s search for his biological father.
“Official” clip (but it’s only 10 seconds long)
ICELAND
“The Love That Remains,” Hlynur Pálmason
Pálmason has been Iceland’s go-to director for Oscar submissions in recent years, with three of the country’s last seven entries and two of the last three, including the shortlisted “Godland” two years ago. “The Love That Remains” is a drama that covers a year in the life of a family after the parents separate. In Cannes, its canine costar, Panda, won the tongue-in-cheek Palm Dog award for the festival’s best canine performance.
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INDIA
“Homebound,” Neeraj Ghaywan
India has a very mixed track record at the Oscars, with only three nominations and no wins in 58 submissions and a recent history of bypassing such likely nominees as “The Lunchbox,” “RRR” and “All We Imagine as Light” in favor of more typically Indian films. But “Homebound,” a Hindi-language drama about two childhood friends trying to become police officers, showed it could potentially appeal to voters when it was named second runner-up to “No Other Choice” and “Sentimental Value” for the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award for international films. Martin Scorsese signed on as executive producer.
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INDONESIA
“Sore: Wife From the Future,” Yandy Laurens
You don’t see too many Oscar entries based on existing web series, but Laurens’ film is one of those, drawn from his 2017 sci-fi romance series. Dion Wiyoko reprises his role as a young man living in Croatia, while Sheila Dara Aisha plays Sore, a woman who says she’s his wife from the future.
Trailer (no English subtitles)
IRAN
“Cause of Death: Unknown,” Ali Zarnegar
A group of strangers traveling through the desert face a moral dilemma when one of them dies unexpectedly while carrying a lot of money but no identification. The film has been touted for showing “the moral principles of the Iranian people,” but its choice over Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” led to calls for the Iranian government to have less influence on the selection of Oscar entries.
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IRAQ
“The President’s Cake,” Hasan Hadi
Hadi won the Camera d’Or for the best first film at this year’s Cannes for this drama, which stars Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as a 9-year-old girl who is assigned to bake a cake for the president’s birthday. Chris Columbus, Marielle Heller and Eric Roth have signed on as executive producers, while Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the United States.
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IRELAND
“Sanatorium,” Gar O’Rourke
Irish director O’Rourke went to Ukraine for this comic documentary about the residents of the Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a former Soviet health center in southern Ukraine that now treats and shelters resilient patients while the war rages outside. The film premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in March.
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ISRAEL
“The Sea,” Shai Carmeli-Pollak
Rather than using an AMPAS-approved selection committee to choose its Oscar entry, as most countries do, Israel automatically gives the slot to the winner of its annual Ophir Awards, its version of the Oscars. This year, that process resulted in one of the race’s most controversial submissions: “The Sea,” a drama about a Palestinian boy in the West Bank trying to see the sea for the first time that dominated the Ophirs with six awards. Angry that the country was submitting a film from a Palestinian point of view, Israel’s minister of culture threatened to withdraw government funding for the Ophirs, which he termed a “shameful ceremony that spits on heroic I.D.F. soldiers.”
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ITALY
“Familia,” Francesco Constable
One of the lowest-profile Italian submissions in years, “Familia” is a biographical drama based on the memoir of Luigi Celeste, a onetime far-right militant and the son of a violent father. Star Francesco Gheghi won the best actor award in the Orizzonti section of the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered. The film beat out 23 other titles in the running to represent Italy, including some from this year’s Venice festival, among them Gianfranco Rosi’s “Below the Clouds” and Pietro Marcello’s “Duse.”
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JAPAN
“Kokuho,” Lee Sang-il
Director Lee hasn’t represented Japan in the Oscar race since “Hula Girls” in 2006, but he’s back after that 19-year absence with “Kokuho,” a drama about the son of a yakuza gangster who is adopted by a kabuki actor when he’s in his teens. It is only the fourth live-action Japanese film to pass 10 billion yen at the box office.
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JORDAN
“All That’s Left of You,” Cherin Dabis
Born in Nebraska to parents of Palestinian and Jordanian descent, actor-director Dabis is best known for the 2009 indie feature “Amreeka” and for directing episodes of “Only Murders in the Building,” “Ozark” and “Ramy.” She directs and acts in “All That’s Left of You,” which flashes back to the life of a Palestinian teenager before he’s confronted by Israeli soldiers.
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KYRGYZSTAN
“Black Red Yellow,” Aktan Abdykalykov
Kyrgyzstan has submitted 18 films to the Oscars since 1998, and one-third of those have come from Abdykalykov, though his 2023 entry “This Is What I Remember” turned out to be ineligible. His new film, based on short stories by Topchugul Shaidullaeva, focuses on the relationship between a traditional carpet maker and a horse herder.
Trailer (no English subtitles)
LATVIA
“Dog of God,” Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele
For the second year in a row, Latvia has submitted an animated film to the Oscars international race – which makes sense, considering that last year’s entry, “Flow,” was nominated in the international category and won for Best Animated Feature. “Dog of God” is a work of adult animation based on the true story of the 17th century man Thiess of Kaltenbrun, who claimed to be a werewolf and was convicted of heresy. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Trailer (no subtitles, but minimal dialogue)
LITHUANIA
“Southern Chronicles,” Ignas Miškinis
This coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old boy who is smitten by a middle-class girl had the biggest opening weekend in the history of Lithuania, on its way to becoming the top-grossing Lithuanian film in history. The selection committee lauded its “exceptional vitality, pulsating energy and the hope it radiates.”
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MEXICO
“We Shall Not Be Moved,” Pierre Saint-Martin
Another film that has been on the festival circuit since early 2024, “We Shall Not Be Moved” is an occasionally absurdist black comedy about a woman pursuing the soldier who killed her brother during a 1968 student protest in Mexico City. At the Ariel Awards, presented by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the film won awards as Best First Work and for its screenplay, actors Luisa Huertas and José Alberto Patiño.
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MONTENEGRO
“The Tower of Strength,” Nikola Vukčević
A return to that old Oscar standby, the World War II drama, “The Tower of Strength” is centered on a Christian child who escapes after an attack on his village and a Muslim stranger who helps him get away. The selection makes Vukčević the first director to represent Montenegro in the Oscar race more than once.
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MOROCCO
“Calle Málaga,” Maryam Touzani
Touzani and her husband, Nabil Ayouch, have dominated the Moroccan Oscar entries in recent years, directing six of the last nine submissions (plus three more for Ayouch between 1998 and 2013). Touzani’s last entry, 2022’s “The Blue Caftan,” made the shortlist, and “Calle Málaga” takes a seemingly somber subject – an elderly woman being forced out of the apartment she’s lived in in Tangier – and turns it into a touching, charming crowd-pleaser, thanks largely to a vibrant lead performance by legendary Spanish actress Carmen Maura (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”).
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NETHERLANDS
“Reedland,” Sven Bresser
Debuting in the Critics’ Week sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, “Reedland” is a psychological thriller starring Gerrit Knobbe as a reed cutter who finds the body of a young girl on his land. His growing determination to discover what happened threatens to uncover dark secrets.
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NORTH MACEDONIA
“The Tale of Silyan,” Tamara Kotevska
The last time Kotevska entered the Oscars international race was with the 2019 documentary “Honeyland,” which became the first film ever nominated in both the international and doc-feature categories. Her follow-up, “The Tale of Silyan,” is another film set in rural North Macedonia; it’s partly an exploration of an old myth about the White storks that are common in the area and partly the story of a farmer whose family leaves the country in search of work after government policies destroy farming profits.
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NORWAY
“Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
One of the most acclaimed of this year’s entries, “Sentimental Value” stars Stellan Skarsgård as an aging director, Renate Reinsve as his estranged daughter and Elle Fanning as a famous American actress starring in his new movie. After its Cannes premiere, the film won the Grand Prix, second only to the Palme d’Or, and signed a U.S. distribution deal with Mubi. It marks Trier’s fourth time representing Norway in the race, after “Reprise” in 2006, “Thelma” in 2017 and nominee “The Worst Person in the World” in 2021.
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PALESTINE
“Palestine 36,” Annemarie Jacir
Rather than choose a charged political story, Palestine has gone with a historical drama from Jacir, who has previously directed the Oscar entries “Salt of This Sea,” “When I Saw You” and “Wajib.” Hiam Abbass, Liam Cunningham and Jeremy Irons are among the actors in this story of colonial oppression and rising resistance began to transform the region.
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PANAMA
“Beloved Tropic,” Ana Endara
A dozen years after her luminous performance in the Chilean Oscar entry “Gloria,” Paulina Garcia is back in the race as an upper-class woman suffering from dementia in this drama that premiered in Toronto in 2024. Jenny Navarrette plays her immigrant caregiver.
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PAPUA NEW GUINEA
“Papa Buka,” Bijukumar Damodaran (Dr. Biju)
The first-ever submission from Papua New Guinea is a historical drama about a World War II veteran who helps a pair of historians research the collaboration of Indian, British and Australian forces in that war. Indian director Damodaran, also known as Dr. Biju, oversaw the first Indian-Papua New Guinea film coproduction.
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PARAGUAY
“Under the Flags, the Sun,” Juanjo Pereira
How does a dictatorship use the media to gain and retain power? That’s the question that “Under the Flags, the Sun” sets out to answer by looking at the Paraguayan media archives of the 35-year rule of Alfredo Stroessner, which ended in 1989. The documentary won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival.
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PERU
“Motherland,” Marco Panatonic
The tug-of-war between a rural life and modernization is at the heart of “Motherland” (formerly “Kinra”), a film about a man from the mountains of southwestern Peru who wants to study engineering in the city of Cusco but doesn’t want to leave his mother and sister. The film premiered at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival back in late 2023, then played other festivals for a year before its theatrical release in Peru in November 2024.
Trailer (no subtitles)
PHILIPPINES
“Magellan,” Lav Diaz
Lav Diaz has been making epic-length works of so-called “slow cinema” for more than 20 years, which makes the two-hours-and-36-minute running time of his historical drama “Magellan” feel positively brisk. (His last Oscar entry, 2013’s “Norte, the End of History,” was four hours and 10 minutes long, while he’s made seven films that range from 5:39 to 10:24.) “Magellan” stars Gael Garcia Bernal as the Portuguese explorer and will be released in the U.S. by Janus.
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POLAND
“Franz,” Agnieszka Holland
Holland’s films have been chosen to represent Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic at the Oscars, and she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Europa Europa” when Germany opted not to submit it in the international category. Her new film, “Franz,” is an unconventional look at writer Franz Kafka, alternating scenes in which Idan Weiss plays Kafka with looks at the author’s continuing influence.
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PORTUGAL
“Banzo,” Margarida Cardoso
The title of this film comes from the word used to describe a melancholy that affected enslaved people on colonial plantations, a world that Cardoso had explored in her documentaries. She shot this narrative film set in 1907 on the African islands (and former Portuguese colony) of São Tomé and Príncipe, where ruins still exist of the kind of cocoa plantations depicted in the movie.
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ROMANIA
“Traffic,” Teodora Mihai
A group of Romanian immigrants in Belgium pull off a major robbery in this film based on a 2012 museum heist by Romanians in the Netherlands. The film was written by Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian New Wave director who made the Oscar shortlist with “Beyond the Hills” in 2012 and helped spur a change in the category’s rules when his “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” wasn’t nominated in 2007.
English-language trailer
SERBIA
“Sun Never Again,” David Jakovljević
Inspired by director Jakovljević’s own childhood, “Sun Never Again” focuses on a young boy who lives in a small Serbian village next to a huge iron ore mine that threatens the family’s existence. Infusing a grim story with magical realism, the director has said he was influenced by the late David Lynch’s recording of Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” from his 2013 album “The Big Dream.”
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SINGAPORE
“Stranger Eyes,” Yeo Siew Hua
The first Singaporean film selected for the main competition at the Venice Film Festival, “Stranger Eyes” is a mystery thriller about a man whose daughter goes missing and who realizes that the most private moments of his family’s daily life are being recorded. Yeo previously represented Singapore in the Oscar race with his 2018 film “A Land Imagined.”
SLOVAKIA
“Father,” Tereza Nvotova
When a father inadvertently leaves his young daughter in the car rather than dropping her off at kindergarten, his life spirals out of control. The film, which was based on an incident in the life of a friend of cowriter Dušan Budzak, was shot in long, uninterrupted takes – a style, director Nvotova said, that she adopted because she wanted “something immersive, experiential – almost like a video game, but grounded in very different circumstances, ones that draw us deeper into ourselves.”
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SLOVENIA
“Little Trouble Girls,” Urška Djukić
An introverted 16-year-old girl experiences an awakening at a weekend retreat for the all-girls choir in her Catholic school in the feature debut of Djukić, an award-winning director of short films. “Little Trouble Girls” won the Berlinale Perspectives FIPRESCI Prize and the cinematography award at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.
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SOUTH KOREA
“No Other Choice,” Park Chan-wook
Korean director Park wasn’t chosen to represent his country when he made his best known films, including “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden.” But his films have been selected twice in the last four years, first with the shortlisted “Decision to Leave” in 2022 and now with “No Other Choice,” a black comedy in which a laid-off worker goes to extremes to eliminate the competition while looking for a new job. The film is based on the 1997 Donald Westlake novel “The Ax,” though it’s driven by Park’s particular kind of carefully choreographed anarchy and madness.
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SPAIN
“Sirât,” Oliver Laxe
At the beginning of Laxe’s brutally hellish film, a man and his young son cross the Moroccan desert to attend a rave in search of his missing daughter. They don’t find her, but they’re swept into a maelstrom of bad vibes and catastrophic twists that make it pretty easy to answer the question asked by one character: “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” Neon bought the movie after its Cannes premiere and will release it in North American later this year.
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SWEDEN
“Eagles of the Republic,” Tarik Saleh
Egyptian-Swedish director Saleh is fond of using his movies to examine the corruption of power and the slippery moral slope it entails, and that subject landed him on the Oscar shortlist three years ago with “Boy From Heaven.” This film is set in the world of filmmaking, with Fares Fares playing a movie star who revives his career but complicates his life when he agrees to star in a propaganda film about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
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SWITZERLAND
“Late Shift,” Petra Volpe
German actress Leonie Benesch starred in the Oscar-nominated “The Teacher’s Lounge” two years ago and in “September 5” last year, and she’s back this year in the lead role of this drama about an overworked surgical nurse facing an avalanche of complications during an exhausting shift. Director Volpe was last in the Oscar race with her 2017 film “The Divine Order.”
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TAIWAN
“Left-Handed Girl,” Shih-Ching Tsou
In Tsou’s gentle family drama, a mother and her two daughters move into the city and struggle to carve out a new life in the night market where their small restaurant occupies a modest space. The Taiwanese-American director has frequently collaborated with Sean Baker, who was editing this film on nights and weekends during the Oscar campaign that led to his multiple awards for “Anora.” Netflix bought this film out of its Cannes premiere in the Critics’ Week section and plans a November release.
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THAILAND
“A Useful Ghost,” Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
This is another family drama from Asia, albeit one that slides into black comedy, supernatural moments and the casual surrealism that often animates the best Southeast Asian cinema. The directorial debut of Boonbunchachoke finds the spirit of a dead woman inhabiting a vacuum cleaner, not to scare people but to help out the husband who has been left on his own.
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TUNISIA
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania
Ben Hania’s films have been nominated twice in recent years, once in the international category for her 2020 drama “The Man Who Sold His Skin” and once for last year’s documentary “Four Daughters.” The latter film mixed fictional and nonfictional techniques, and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” does the same: On its soundtrack, it uses the actual recording of a 70-minute phone call that 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab made to Red Crescent emergency volunteers from a car in Gaza where she was trapped with the bodies of family members who had been killed by Israeli soldiers. Actors re-create the panicked scene in the Red Crescent offices, making the film almost unbearably harrowing.
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TURKEY
“One of Those Days When Hemme Dies,” Murat Fıratoğlu
First-time director Fıratoğlu plays a day laborer searching a Turkish town to shoot the boss who didn’t pay him in this film that won the Special Jury Prize in the Orizzonti section at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. Turkey has been submitting films to the Oscars since 1964 but is still looking for its first nomination.
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UKRAINE
“2000 Meters to Andriivka,” Mstyslav Chernov
Two years ago, Chernov won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for his Ukrainian doc “20 Days in Mariupol.” He has reteamed with the Associated Press and Frontline for this film, which followed Ukrainian forces as they recaptured the Russian-occupied city of Andriivka.
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URUGUAY
“Don’t You Let Me Go,” Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge
Chiara Hourcade and Victoria Jorge star in this drama as a grief-stricken woman and her best friend, who has just died. The film won the Nora Ephron Award after its 2024 premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
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