Oscars International Race Kicks Off With More Than 100 Entries for the First Time Ever

The Oscar race in the Best International Feature Film category officially opened on Friday with 29 contending films on an Academy members-only screening platform, but there’s lots more where those came from. For the first time ever, more than 100 films have either been submitted by their home countries or have qualified by winning awards at a handful of Oscar-approved film festivals. As of Friday, Oct. 9, an even 100 films have been announced as submissions from individual countries, while another three won the top awards at the Sundance, Berlin and Toronto film festivals, which for the first time have been granted Oscar-qualifying status by the Academy. (Another three films won qualifying festival awards from Sundance, Cannes and Venice, but they were also submitted by Montenegro, Romania and Denmark, respectively.) The 103 films have not all been vetted by the Academy, which examines all submissions to make sure they are at least 50% in a language other than English, have received a theatrical release during the eligibility period and were made with sufficient creative control from the submitting country. Over the last five years, an average of a little more than three films a year have been either withdrawn after submission or deemed ineligible, with the high coming last year when six announced films were not on the official eligibility list. But even if another large number of submissions are found to be ineligible, this year’s final total is likely to easily top the old record for eligible films, 93, which was set in 2020 and matched in 2022. Since then, the number of qualifying films has been in the 80s, with 88 in 2023, 85 in 2024 and 86 in 2025. This year’s total is swollen by the new rule that allows seven additional films to qualify by winning film-festival awards (with Sundance qualifying both its world narrative and world documentary winners and Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Busan sending one each). In addition, a few countries that have never before entered the race have done so this year, with Cyprus, El Salvador and Rwanda submitting for the first time. The most high-profile films in the race include Austria’s “Rose,” Belgium’s “Coward,” Denmark’s “Woman Unknown,” France’s “Minotaur,” Germany’s “Everytime,” Japan’s “All of a Sudden,” Palestine’s “Citizen Osama,” Poland’s “Fatherland,” Romania’s “Fjord,” South Korea’s “Possible Love” and Spain’s “La Bola Negra.” Academy members received an email on Friday inviting them to opt in and participate in first-round voting in the category. At the same time, a section of the private Academy Screening Room platform devoted to the international category opened with 29 submissions available for viewing. They were arranged in alphabetical order by the film title rather than the name of the submitting country, which reflects the fact that beginning this year, the official recipient of the international Oscar will be the film itself rather than the country of origin. Currently available films include Algeria’s “Roqia,” Canada’s “Nina Roza,” the Czech Republic’s “If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Greece’s “Broken Vein,” Hungary’s “Silent Friend,” Ireland’s “Aontas,” Israel’s “Tell Me Everything,” Sweden’s “Adult Supervision,” Ukraine’s “Traces” and the United Kingdom’s “Rehearsals for a Revolution,” which had not been publicly identified as the U.K. submission. Members who opt in to cast ballots will be separated into groups and will receive an assignment list of movies that are required viewing in late October. Last year, the seven groups were each assigned a different 12 or 13 films as mandatory viewing, although this year’s record number of submissions will likely require more groups or more films in each group. First-round voting will take place from Dec. 7 through Dec. 11, with a 15-film shortlist announced on Dec. 15. Michèle Ohayon and James Wilson will serve as co-chairs of the International Feature Film Executive Committee. The category has grown at a time when the Academy has become increasingly national, with about 25% of its members based outside the U.S. For the last three years in a row, two of the 10 Best Picture nominees have been non-English-language films, with five of those six nominees also competing in the Best International Feature Film category. Here is the list of reported submissions and festival-qualifying films: (TheWrap has an expanded version of the list with descriptions of all the films and links to trailers, here) Country submissions:ALBANIA: “A State Film,” Roland SejkoALGERIA: “Roqia,” Yanis KoussimARGENTINA: “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” Laura CasabeARMENIA: “In the Land of Arto,” Tamara StepanyanAUSTRALIA: “First Light,” James J. RobinsonAUSTRIA: “Rose,” Markus SchleinzerBANGLADESH: “Roid,” Mejbaur Rahman SumonBELGIUM: “Coward,” Lukas DhontBOLIVIA: “The Condor Daughter,” Alvaro Olmos TorricoBOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: “The Widower,” Hari SecicBRAZIL: “Gugu’s World,” Allan DebertonBULGARIA: “The Dreamed Adventure,” Valeska GrisebachCAMBODIA: “Becoming Human,” Poley LyCAMEROON: “Mabanda,” Kang QuintusCANADA: “Nina Roza,” Genevieve Dulude-de CellesCHAD: “Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars,” Mahamat-Saleh HarounCHILE: “The Meltdown,” Manuela MartelliCHINA: “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East,” Wen MuyeCOLOMBIA: “Rains Over Babel,” Gala del SolCOSTA RICA: “If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night,” Kim TorresCROATIA: “God Will Not Help,” Hana JusicCUBA: “Malecon,” Carlos LarrazabalCYPRUS: “Hold Onto Me,” Myrsini AristidouCZECH REPUBLIC: “If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Pepa LubokackiDEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO: “Rumba Royale,” Yohane Dean Lengol and Hamed MobasserDENMARK: “Woman Unknown,” May el-ToukhyDOMINICAN REPUBLIC: “Melodrama,” Andres FariasECUADOR: “The Ivy,” Ana Cristina BarraganEGYPT: “The Stories,” Abu Bakr ShawkyEL SALVADOR: “Vertices,” Arturo Lopez RodasESTONIA: “Our Erika,” German GolubFINLAND: “The Squirrel,” Markus LehmusruusuFRANCE: “Minotaur,” Andrey ZvyagintsevGEORGIA: “Guria,” Levan KoguashviliGERMANY: “Everytime,” Sandra WollnerGREECE: “Broken Vein,” Yannis EconomidesGUATEMALA: “Mountains of Fire,” Jayro BustamanteHONG KONG: “Sons of the Neon Night,” Juno MakHUNGARY: “Silent Friend,” Ildiko EnyediICELAND: “The Ground Beneath Our Feet,” Yrsa Roca FannbergINDIA: “Gondhal,” Santosh DavakharINDONESIA: “Four Seasons in Java,” Kamila AndiniIRAN: “Land of Angels,” Babak KhajehpashaIRAQ: “No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman,” Halkawt MustafaIRELAND: “Aontas,” Damian McCannISRAEL: “Tell Me Everything,” Moshe RosenthalITALY: “The Spiral,” Paolo StippoliJAPAN: “All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke HamaguchiJORDAN: “Sink,” Zain DuraieKAZAKHSTAN: “Abel,” Elzat EskendirKENYA: “One Woman One Bra,” Vincho NchoguKOSOVO: “Dua,” Blerta BasholiKYRGYZSTAN: “Cassandra,” Bekzat PirmatovLATVIA: “Ulya,” Viesturs KairissLEBANON: “Furies,” Rami KodeihLITHUANIA: “How to Divorce During the War,” Andrius BlazeviciusLUXEMBOURG: “Child,” Cyrus NeshvadMALAYSIA: “The Fox King,” Woo Ming JinMALTA: “Żejtune,” Alex CamilleriMEXICO: “On the Road,” David PablosMONGOLIA: “Independence: Keeper of the Prophecy,” Tamir Bat-UlziiMONTENEGRO: “To Hold a Mountain,” Biljana Tutorov and Petar GlomazicMOROCCO: “Strawberries,” Laila MarrakchiNEPAL: “Elephants in the Fog,” Abinash Bikram ShahNETHERLANDS: “Paikar,” Dawood HilmandiNEW ZEALAND: “Mārama,” Taratoa StappardNIGERIA: “Dear Ajayi,” Damilola OrimogunjeNORTH MACEDONIA: “17,” Kosara MiticNORWAY: “Growth of the Soil,” Hans Petter MolandPAKISTAN: “Hanging by a Wire,” Mohammed Ali NaqviPALESTINE: “Citizen Osama,” Ahmed HassounaPANAMA: “Chichero,” Aaron Bromley and Arturo MontenegroPARAGUAY: “Narciso,” Marcelo MartinessiPERU: “Night Has Come,” Paolo TizonPHILIPPINES: “Filipinana,” Paolo TizonPOLAND: “Fatherland,” Pawel PawlikowskiPORTUGAL: “The Scent of Things Remembered,” Antonio FerreiraROMANIA: “Fjord,” Crisitian MungiuRWANDA: “Ben’Imana,” Marie Clementine DusabejamboSAUDI ARABIA: “A Matter of Life and Death,” Anas Ba-TahafSENEGAL: “The Attachment,” Mamadou Khouma GueyeSERBIA: “Wanderlust,” Nenad PavlovicSINGAPORE: “We Are All Strangers,” Anthony ChenSLOVAKIA: “Flood,” Martin GondaSLOVENIA: “Fantasy,” KuklaSOUTH AFRICA: “Variations on a Theme,” Devon Delmar and Jason JacobsSOUTH KOREA: “Possible Love,” Lee Chang-dongSPAIN: “La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier AmbrossiSRI LANKA: “Riverstone,” Lalith RathnayakeSWEDEN: “Adult Supervision,” Alex SchulmanSWITZERLAND: “Who Is Still Alive,” Nicolas WadimoffSYRIA: “The Other Side of the Sun,” Tawfik SabouniTAIWAN: “A Foggy Tale,” Chen Yu-hsunTHAILAND: “9 Temples to Heaven,” Sompot ChidgasornpongseTURKEY: “Like a Limbless Tree,” Tunc DavutUKRAINE: “Traces,” Alisa KovalenkoUNITED KINGDOM: “Rehearsals for a Revolution,”URUGUAY: “A Loose End,” Daniel HendlerVENEZUELA: “Death Has No Master,” Jorge Thielen ArmandVIETNAM: “Spirit Guardians: The Last Secret of the First Emperor,” Nguyen Phan Quang Binh Film-festival qualifiers:SUNDANCE (narrative): “Shame and Money,” Visar MorinaBERLIN: “Yellow Letters,” Ilker ÇatakTORONTO: “Angh,” Theja Rio Film-festival qualifiers that were also submitted by their home countries:CANNES: “Fjord” (Romania)VENICE: “Woman Unknown” (Denmark)SUNDANCE (documentary): “To Hold a Mountain” (Montenegro) The final Oscar-qualifying festival, the Busan International Film Festival, will announce its winner on Oct. 15.