Syria has submitted Tawfik Sabouni’s The Other Side of the Sun as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film category of the the 99th Academy Awards.

It is the first film submitted by Syria since the ousting of dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 and the establishment of a transitional government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, after a devastating near 14-year civil war.

It also marks the first selection made by the newly established Syrian Oscar committee overseen by the General Organization for Cinema and accredited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The selection also holds significance for its setting of the notorious real-life Saydnaya prison, known as the ‘Human Slaughterhouse’, where 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed by the Assad Regime, and tens of thousands more were held on sham charges and tortured.

“The selection of The Other Side of the Sun comes within a distinctive cinematic and humanitarian context,” said the General Organisation for Cinema. “The film explores the experience of imprisonment in Saydnaya Prison, one of the most prominent detention sites associated with Syria’s recent history and collective memory during the previous decades of rule.

The Other Side of the Sun is based on the experiences of its director Sabouni, who was imprisoned there, as well as four other former inmates who survived.

Following the fall of the regime in December 2024, Sabouni returned to Saydnaya as a filmmaker alongside several other survivors, to revisit their experiences of detention. Through reenactment, the film brings their memories and testimonies to the screen, conveying aspects of their suffering that words alone cannot fully capture.

The film also serves as a documentary record of the memories of detainees and missing persons and their families. Specialized sources have described the film as a work that confronts the legacy of Syria’s prison and detention system through memory, testimony, and the restoration of survivors’ voices.

“I am deeply happy and moved by this selection. This moment is the culmination of years of hard work, years during which I carried this film on my own, despite the doubts, the obstacles and the weight of such a responsibility. To see this project come to fruition today and find its place on such a stage is an immense personal and collective victory,” said Sabouni.

“But beyond the artistic journey, the true significance of this selection lies in the voice it gives to those whom others have sought to silence. The stories of the men and women who lost their lives in the prisons of the Assad regime will never be forgotten. Their memory, their suffering and their dignity will be forever etched in our minds and presented to the eyes of the world. It is to them, above all, that this selection belongs.”

The Other Side of the Sun premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale earlier this year and has since participated in several international festivals and received awards at the Amman International Film Festival, including the Jury Award, the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Award, and the Audience Award in the Arab Documentary Feature Competition.

The film is produced by Dérives (Belgium), Habilis Productions (France) and Clin d’Oeil Films (Belgium), with international sales handled by Andana Films.

Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov has begun pre-production on Kai, his first fiction feature in five years since 2021 drama Rhino.

Filming on Kai is scheduled to take place in Ukraine in the first half of 2027, with the project bringing together producers from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.

Former political prisoner Sentsov has been serving in the Ukrainian armed forces since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, initially taking part in the defence of Kyiv and later fighting in the Donbas.

During Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, in which he served as a junior lieutenant, he recorded the footage that became his documentary Real (2024).

Filming on Kai is scheduled to take place in Ukraine in the first half of 2027, with the project bringing together producers from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.

The drama will be set against the period running from Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014), also known as the Maidan Revolution, and the early years of the Russian-Ukrainian War when Russia occupied Crimea.

At the heart of drama is a family confronting an internal crisis as their country undergoes fundamental change, for an intimate story revisiting a turning point in European history the consequences of which continue to shape lives across the continent.

“My screenplay draws on my own experiences, including raising a son with autism, taking part in the Maidan protests and evacuating civilians from combat zones,” says Sentsov. “It is not strictly autobiographical, but it is deeply personal. At its heart are family relationships and the choices people make when personal upheaval coincides with historic change.”

Ukrainian writer-director Maryna Stepanska has joined the project as co-writer. She wrote and directed Falling (2017), which premiered at Karlovy Vary, and co-wrote Anna Buryachkova’s Forever-Forever (2023), which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti Extra section.

Filming is planned in regions of Ukraine comparatively less affected by air raid alerts and attacks. The Ukrainian crew will include veterans and serving military personnel, with the production offering a route back into the film industry for those transitioning to civilian life.

Kai is produced by Denis Ivanov and Oleh Sentsov through Ukraine’s Arthouse Traffic and Cry Cinema. Co-producers are Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska and Izabela Wójcik of Apple Film Production in Poland; Heino Deckert of ma.ja.de. fiction in Germany; Šárka Cimbalová and Mike Downey of Marlene Film Production in the Czech Republic; and François Yon and Paul De Beco of France’s Playtime, which is also handling international sales.

The project has secured support from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films (ESFUF), Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and the Polish Film Institute, alongside other funders. Development was supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the Göteborg Film Fund and FILMBOOST, a joint programme of the German Film Academy and NGO Docudays. Kai was presented at the Les Arcs Film Festival’s Co-Production Village in 2022.

Sentsov established his international reputation with Gamer (2011), which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Arrested by Russian occupying authorities in Crimea in 2014, Sentsov spent more than five years in prison before his release in 2019. While imprisoned in Labytnangi, Russia, he worked remotely on Numbers (2020), an adaptation of his own play co-directed with Akhtem Seitablaiev, sold internationally by Latido Films.. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.

His most recent fiction feature, Rhino (2021), premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti competition and won the Bronze Horse for Best Film at the Stockholm International Film Festival.

It screened at more than 50 international festivals, was taken to market by London-based West End Films and it sold to territories including the United States, France, Spain, Italy, the UK, Scandinavia and the Middle East.

“Gamer was Oleh’s breakout indie feature about a young video gamer in Crimea, which premiered to high praise at the Rotterdam International Film Festival,” says co-producer and former European Film Academy Chair Mike Downey, “while Rhino was gritty crime drama exploring 1990s Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He followed that with Real, striking documentary capturing actual front-line trench warfare in real time. Kai brings Oleh’s work as a film maker much closer to home, drawing very much on his personal experiences in these embattled historically significant times.”

Alongside filmmaking, Sentsov is now a combat battalion commander in the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade “Magura” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Since 2022, he has bee involved in fighting in intense sectors including Bakhmut, Avdiivka, the southern front near Robotyne, and the Kursk incursion, and wounded multiple times in combat.