The number of entries in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category is on the verge of hitting 90 as the Sept. 30 submission deadline nears.

As of Tuesday, 88 films have been announced as submissions by their countries, passing the total of 86 that qualified last year and making it likely that the total will hit 90 for the first time in four years.

The 86 submissions do not include films from 16 countries that took part in the race last year, including regular participants China, South Africa and the United Kingdom.  

Countries with approved selection committees have until Sept. 30 to choose a film to represent their country in the race. The Academy then vets those films to make sure they meet language, creative input and theatrical-release requirements.

At the moment, the category doesn’t seem to have the kind of clear frontrunner it had in recent years with “Sentimental Value,” “The Zone of Interest” and “All Quiet on the Western Front.” (Of course, “Emilia Perez” seemed to be a clear frontrunner this time of year in 2024, but it ended up losing to “I’m Still Here.”)

The films with the best chance of advancing to the shortlist at this point seem to be Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord,” which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes; Javier Calvo and Javier Abrosso’s “La Bola Negra,” Spain’s entry; “Fatherland” from Pawel Pawlikowski, whose last two films have been nominated; South Korea’s “Possible Love,” from Lee Chang-dong; Japan’s “All of a Sudden,” from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose last film won; Lukas Dhont’s “Coward,” Belgium’s entry; Austria’s “Rose,” which like “Fatherland” stars Sandra Huller; and the French submission, “Minotaur,” from twice-nominated Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, now living in exile in Paris.

All of those films except “Possible Love” and “Rose” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May – and to further confirm that festival’s primacy as an Oscar feeder in this category, so did “The Dreamed Adventure” (Bulgaria), “Elephants in the Fog” (Nepal), “Everytime” (Germany), “The Meltdown” (Chile), “Strawberries” (Morocco), “Ulya” (Latvia), “Dua” (Kosovo), “9 Temples to Heaven” (Thailand) and “Death Has No Master” (Venezuela).

The list below consists of all the films that were announced as official submissions by their home countries, or were reported to have been entered. Submission does not guarantee that a film will meet the Academy’s requirements, although it’s likely that the vast majority of these films will end up on the official list of qualifying movies when the Academy releases it.

The Academy will assign voters in the international category lists of required-viewing films, most likely in late October. An initial round of voting will take place Dec. 7-11, with a 15-film shortlist announced on Dec. 15.

For the first time, AMPAS has added a new method of qualifying, with films that won awards at six different festivals accepted in the competition as long as they meet the other requirements. We’ve added the films that qualified via festival awards to the end of this list.

Below, you can find information on all the known submissions, along with trailers of the films when available.

Country submissions

ALBANIA
“A State Film,” Roland Sejko
Documentary filmmaker Sejko assembled this look at the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, which lasted from 1946 until 1991, by using propaganda footage produced by the regime itself, and presenting it without commentary. This is the second documentary to be submitted by Albania, the only previous one being 2023’s “Alexander.”
Trailer (no dialogue)

ALGERIA
“Roqia,” Yanis Koussim
One of a handful of horror films in the competition, Koussim’s thriller focuses on an exorcist and a young man who is suffering from amnesia and possibly demonic possession that may date back to his military service. The film mixes fundamentalist religion with themes drawn from  the “Black Decade” of the Algerian Civil War in the 1990s.
Subtitled trailer

ARGENTINA
“The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” Laura Casabe
In recent years, South American Oscar submissions have often used horror tropes to deal with political and social realities, and this year’s Argentinian entry does that as it tells a coming-of-age story set against the 2001 economic policies that led to extensive civil unrest. Based on two short stories by Mariana Enríquez, the film deals with three teenage girls, one of whom casts a spell on the boy they’re all attracted to.  
Subtitled trailer

ARMENIA
“In the Land of Arto,” Tamara Stepanyan
Stepanyan’s narrative fiction debut stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi (“Holy Spider”) and Camille Cottin (“House of Gucci”) in the story of a woman who discovers her husband’s hidden past when she arrives in Armenia to legalize his death.  Stepanyan also represented Armenia in the Oscar race last year with her documentary “My Armenian Phantoms.”
Subtitled trailer

AUSTRALIA
“First Light,” James J. Robinson
Set on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, this film is Australia’s first Filipino-language entry, and the debut feature from Australian-Filipino filmmaker and photographer Robinson. It takes place in a Catholic convent where a nun has her faith shaken by the injustice and corruption she sees in the aftermath of a tragic accident.
Subtitled trailer

AUSTRIA
“Rose,” Markus Schleinzer
One of two notable 2026 entries to star Sandra Hüller (Poland’s “Fatherland” being the other), “Rose” is set in the 17th century and features Hüller as a woman who disguises herself as a soldier and claims to be the heir to an abandoned estate in a small village. The film premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where Hüller won the best-actress award, and has also played or is scheduled to play at festivals in Hong Kong, Sydney, Karlovy Vary, Melbourne, Sarajevo, New Zealand, Telluride, Brussels, New York, London, Vancouver and Mill Valley before getting a U.S. theatrical release from Mubi. 
Subtitled trailer

BANGLADESH
“Roid,” Mejbaur Rahman Sumon
An allegory that uses Old Testament imagery to slowly unveil a story about a middle-aged man whose attempts to abandon his volatile wife repeatedly fail, “Roid”  takes place in a rural Bangladeshi village but gradually enters a realm of symbolism and abstraction.  Sumon also directed the country’s 2022 Oscar submission, “Hawa.”
Subtitled trailer

BELGIUM
“Coward,” Lukas Dhont
Stars Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared the best-actor award in Cannes for their performances in this drama as gay World War I soldiers who entertain the troops by staging theatrical revues. Dhont has made three feature films, and all three have been Belgian Oscar submissions, with “Girl” entering the race in 2018 and “Close” earning a nomination in 2022.
Subtitled trailer

BOLIVIA
“The Condor Daughter,” Álvaro Olmos Torrico
For years, a common theme in international Oscar entries has been the collision between old ways and modern living. This year’s Bolivian entry is an example of that kind of story, telling of a young singer in the Bolivian Andes who is torn between folk traditions and a career in the city. Bolivia has submitted 19 films to the Oscars since 1995, but two were ruled ineligible, one was withdrawn and none have been nominated or shortlisted.
Subtitled trailer

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
“The Widower,” Hari Šečić
An aging electrician begins to question his patriarchal ways after the death of his wife in Šečić’s feature debut, which premiered at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival. Since it won its first Oscar for “No Man’s Land” in 2002, Bosnia and Herzegovina has submitted a film every year, with two entries making the shortlist and one, “Quo Vadis, Aida?” earning a nomination.
Trailer (no subtitles)

BRAZIL
“Gugu’s World,” Allan Deberton
Brazil has been on a roll at the Oscars lately, with Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” winning Best International Feature Film two years ago and Kleber Mendonca Filho’s “The Secret Agent” landing four noms, including international and Best Picture, last year. While those two films came from acclaimed and experienced directors, Deberton is better known as a producer. “Gugu’s World” stars Yuri Gomes as the title character, a queer teenager who wants to be a footballer but isn’t accepted by his father.  
Subtitled trailer

BULGARIA
“The Dreamed Adventure,” Valeska Grisebach
German director Grisebach won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her drama set on the border between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Yana Radeva plays an archaeologist who is drawn into an Eastern European underworld when she tries to help a friend whose car has been stolen.
Subtitled clip

CAMBODIA
“Becoming Human,” Poley Ly
Not to be confused with “Being Heumann,” “Becoming Human” is a ghost story starring Savorn Serak as the spirit of an abandoned cinema, who must decide whether to remain a ghostly guardian of the decrepit building or be reborn as a human. The film is the debut feature for director Ly, who has been compared to Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, also enamored of the spirit world. 
Subtitled trailer

CAMEROON
“Mabanda,” Kang Quintus
The second film to be directed by Cameroonian filmmaker and actor Quintus, “Mabanda” is focused on a pregnant teenager living with an abusive father after the death of her mother. It is the eighth film to be submitted by Cameroon, and like four of the others, it is in Cameroonian Pidgin English.  
Trailer (no dialogue)

CANADA
“Nina Roza,” Genevieve Dulude-de Celles
A Bulgarian-born art curator in Canada must return to his homeland for the first time in decades in search of a young art prodigy in this drama that won the screenplay award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Canada had a 10-year stretch at the Oscars between 2003 and 2012 that included one winner, five nominees and seven shortlisted films, but since then it has made the shortlist twice but failed to earn another nomination.
Subtitled trailer

CHAD
“Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
A young woman who experiences visions befriends the village outcast in this drama set in northeastern Chad, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI Prize there. Chad has only submitted four films to the Oscars over the past 24 years, all of which have been directed by Haroun.
Subtitled trailer

CHILE
“The Meltdown,” Manuela Martelli
Chilean actress-director Martelli has said that she’s planning to make a trilogy of films tracing the history of her country in the late 20th century, “The Meltdown” being the second. (“1976,” which came out five years ago, was the first.) The film is set in 1992 and mixes personal and national trauma in its story of a young girl who befriends a German skier training near a Chilean ski resort.
Subtitled trailer

COLOMBIA
“Rains Over Babel,” Gala del Sol
Director del Sol was a finalist at the Student Academy Awards in 2018 for a short she made at Chapman University. She makes her feature debut with “Rains Over Babel,” a “tropical punk fantasy” that reimagines Dante’s “Inferno” by situating purgatory in a dive bar set in the mythical Colombian city of Maya. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Subtitled trailer

COSTA RICA
“If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night,” Kim Torres
Rural Costa Rican folklore is used to cover up violence against women in the feature directorial debut of Kim Torres, who has said she based the screenplay on some of her own experiences growing up. Torres used a cast made up largely of nonprofessional actors.
Subtitled trailer

CROATIA
“God Will Not Help,” Hana Jušić
While she directed the Chilean Oscar entry, Manuela Martelli stars in the Croatian submission as an early 20th-century woman who arrives in a remote village in the Croatian mountains claiming to be the widow of a local man who left the town for South America years earlier. Jušić is the third female director to represent Croatia at the Oscars in the last four years – and as the director of the country’s 2017 submission, “Quit Staring at My Plate,” she’s the first woman to have more than one film chosen by the Croatian selection committee. (Five men have had multiple films selected.)
Subtitled trailer

CUBA
“Malecón,” Carlos Larrazabal
César Domínguez stars in this drama as Elvis, an ex-convict who is released from prison after serving 10 years, but must struggle not to be drawn into Havana’s criminal underworld. The film is Larrazabal’s feature debut.
Subtitled trailer

CYPRUS
“Hold Onto Me,” Myrsini Aristidou
The first-ever entry from Cyprus stars Maria Petrova as Iris, an 11-year-old girl who goes in search of her long-absent father (Christos Passalis) after hearing that he’s returned to their hometown for a funeral. The first feature from Greek Cypriot writer-director Aristidou, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic.
Subtitled trailer

CZECH REPUBLIC
“If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Pepa Lubojacki
Last year, the Czech Republic submitted its first documentary to the Oscar race with Klara Tasovska’s “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be”; this year, it submitted its second doc with Lubojacki’s “If Pigeons Turned to Gold.” The film follows four of Lubojacki’s relatives over a period of five years, exploring why addiction, alcoholism and homelessness repeats across generations in the family. The film premiered in Berlin in February.
Subtitled trailer

DENMARK
“Woman Unknown,” May el-Toukhy
Danish-Egyptian director el-Toukhy was the only woman among the 21 directors in the main competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, but her film “Woman Unknown” qualified for the Oscars by winning the Golden Lion over works by Werner Herzog, Florian Zeller, Danny Boyle, Nanni Moretti, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lee Chang-dong, Lance Oppenheim, Martin McDonagh and others. Even after it qualified for the Oscars by winning that award, Denmark chose the film as its official representative. Mathilde Arcel stars as a former housekeeper who is hiding secrets as she prepares to marry her former employer in formerly German-occupied Denmark just after World War II. In accepting the award from the Venice jury headed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, el-Toukhy said the film was about “the female body as a battleground.”
Subtitled trailer

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“Melodrama,” Andres Farias
Chosen from seven finalists by the Dominican selection committee, “Melodrama” is a romance about a widow whose neighbors disapprove of her growing relationship with a Haitian construction worker. The film premiered at the Havana Film Festival and won best-film, best-director and best-actress (Mercedes Morales) awards at the Dominican Film Festival in New York. 
Subtitled trailer

ECUADOR
“The Ivy,” Ana Cristina Barragan
This social realist drama set in a coastal town in Ecuador deals with repressed pain that surfaces in the growing connection between a woman in her 30s and a teenage boy. The film won the screenplay award in the Orizzonti section of the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Barragan, whose 2017 film “Alba” was that year’s Oscar submission, becomes the third Ecuadorian director to represent the country in the Oscar race more than once, after Sebastian Cordero (three times) and Javier Andrade (twice).
Subtitled trailer

EGYPT
“The Stories,” Abu Bakr Shawky
This anthology film tells five different stories spanning four decades in the life of an Egyptian man and an Austrian woman who become pen pals before marrying and raising a family. The film was inspired by writer-director Shawky’s parents and comes eight years after his debut feature, “Yommedine,” was Egypt’s Oscar submission. Since 1958, the country has submitted 39 films to the international Oscar race without ever receiving a nomination, a record for futility second only to Portugal.
Subtitled teaser trailer

EL SALVADOR
“Vértices,” Arturo López Rodas
Joining Cypress as a country entering a film in the Oscar race for the first time, El Salvador has entered a black-and-white drama about three old friends reuniting at a funeral for the first time in 30 years. Ángel Flamenco, Francisco Martinez and Francisco Graniello play the lead roles, while writer-director López Rodas changed the setting from a birthday to a funeral after the death of a close friend who’d promised to read the script.
Subtitled trailer

ESTONIA
“Our Erika,” German Golub
Estonian bicycle racer Erika Salumae, who overcame childhood hardships to win gold medals in cycling at the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympics, is the subject of this sports biopic by Golub, who won the top prize in the international narrative category at the Student Academy Awards in 2020. Karolin Jürise plays Salumae as an adult, with two child actors taking the role of the athlete at the ages of 5 and 10.
Trailer (no subtitles)

FINLAND
“The Squirrel,” Markus Lehmusruusu
Finland, which has made the shortlist twice in the last five years with the wonderfully quirky, deadpan films “Compartment No. 6” and “Fallen Leaves,” is back with a sci-fi dramedy set in a dystopian future world in which plants and animals are so scarce as to be almost nonexistent.  Miro Lopperi plays a designer of synthetic pets who finds what might be the planet’s last real squirrel, while Mimosa Willamo plays the government official sent to investigate.
Subtitled trailer

FRANCE
“Minotaur,” Andrey Zvyagintsev
Zvyagintsev’s last two films, 2014’s “Leviathan” and 2017’s “Loveless,” were nominated for Oscars after being submitted by Russia. After a life-threatening, Covid-related illness that kept him hospitalized for almost a year, and after criticizing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the director moved to France, where he has lived in exile since 2022. “Minotaur,” a French-Latvian-German coproduction, deals with a Russian oligarch who learns his wife is having an affair in the early days of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It won this year’s Grand Prix in Cannes, making it runner-up to Palme d’Or winner “Fjord.” While France has entered films by directors from Iran and Vietnam in recent years, Zvyagintsev is the first Russian director to ever represent the country at the Oscars.
Subtitled trailer

GEORGIA
“Guria,” Levan Koguashvili
Georgia has submitted some bold and striking films over the last dozen years, but the country hasn’t received a nomination since its first-ever submission in 1996. Its latest entry, the second Georgian contender to be directed by Koguashvili, is set in a rural section of Western Georgia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with a widowed farmer trying to survive in tough times.
Subtitled clip

GERMANY
“Everytime,” Sandra Wollner
Austrian writer-director Wollner won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes with this drama about a mother, daughter and teenage boy who take a holiday trip to Tenerife, Spain in the aftermath of a tragic accident. The last five German entries have either won the Oscar (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), been nominated (“The Teachers’ Lounge,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”) or been shortlisted (“I’m Your Man,” “Sound of Falling”) – and over the last 25 years, Germany has had one of the most remarkable streaks in the category’s history, with three wins, 11 nominations and 17 shortlisted films.
Subtitled clip

GREECE
“Broken Vein,” Yannis Economides
Since its last nomination for Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal “Dogtooth” in 2010, Greece has been torn between submitting bold and weird films and going with more straightforward, crowd-pleasing ones. In a way, “Broken Vein” splits the difference. This thriller about a businessman who must find a way to pay off his debt to a loan shark  isn’t downright bizarre, but it’s the work of a director known for his tough edge and his embrace of graphic violence.
Subtitled trailer

HONG KONG
“Sons of the Neon Night,” Juno Mak
Since it received nominations for the historical dramas “Farewell My Concubine” and “Raise the Red Lantern” in the early 1990s, Hong Kong has regularly submitted the kind of crime thrillers and action films for which its cinema is known, without any of them earning a nomination. “Sons of the Neon Night” is another action thriller, one in which the heir to a drug trafficking syndicate starts a war in an alternate version of 1990s Hong Kong. Stars include Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Alex To.
Subtitled trailer

HUNGARY
“Silent Friend,” Ildikó Enyedi
Lea Seydoux has starred in a number of films over the past year (“Gentle Monster,” “The Unknown,” “Alpha Gang” … ), but “Silent Friend” is the only one that ended up in the Oscars’ international race. She plays a French botanist in the drama, which uses a ginkgo tree as the point of connection between stories taking place in 1908, 1972 and 2020. Director Enyedi has represented Hungary three times in this category, and her 2017 film “On Body and Soul” is the most recent Hungarian nominee.
Subtitled trailer

ICELAND
“The Ground Beneath Our Feet,” Yrsa Roca Fannberg
A nonfiction film set in a nursing home in Reykjavik and shot on 16mm film, “The Ground Beneath Our Feet” is is the first documentary every submitted by Iceland, which has sent 47 films to the Oscars since 1980. The country has only been nominated once, in 1991, though it has made the shortlist three times in the last five years.
Subtitled trailer

INDIA
“Gondhal,” Santosh Davakhar
The Gondhal ceremony, a devotional ritual in which songs are performed for gods and goddesses, is the setting for this crime drama that involves murder and betrayal and reportedly includes Indian cinema’s first 25-minute take. The film is only the fourth of India’s 59 Oscar submissions in the Marathi language. India’s selection committee has had a spotty record in recent years, bypassing acclaimed films like “The Lunchbox” and “RRR” in favor of entries that weren’t nominated.
Subtitled trailer

INDONESIA
“Four Seasons in Java,” Kamila Andini
A woman is ostracized when she returns to her hometown after spending time in prison for killing the man who raped her in Andini’s film, which incorporates moments of magical realism. The film, which premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, is Andini’s second to be submitted by Indonesia, following “Yuni” in 2021.
Subtitled trailer

IRAQ
“No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman,” Halkawt Mustafa
The life of Nadia Murad, who was abducted by the Islamic State in 2014 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war,” inspired this story of a female sniper who goes to Mosul to rescue her sister from the jihadist organization. The film premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival.
Teaser trailer

IRELAND
“Aontas,” Damian McCann
Co-writer and director McCann uses backward chronology to tell this story of three women who rob a credit union in a rural Irish town. The film had one of the earliest premieres of any of this year’s entries, debuting at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February 2025. This is the 13th Irish Oscar submission, with three of the previous entries making the shortlist and one earning a nomination.
Subtitled trailer

ISRAEL
“Tell Me Everything,” Moshe Rosenthal
A preteen boy discovers that his father is in a relationship with another man in this drama that begins in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The film set a record with 16 nominations for the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Academy Awards; it won 10 of those – including Best Picture, which automatically made it the country’s Oscar entry. Israel holds the record for the most international nominations without a win, 10.
Trailer (No subtitles)

ITALY
“The Spiral,” Paolo Stippoli
Italy has submitted 70 films to the Oscars since the international category was created in 1956, racking up the most Oscar wins of any country, 14, and the second-most nominations, 33. But this is probably the first time that the Italian entry has screened at the Toronto Film Festival in the pulpy, genre-specific Midnight Madness category, where it finished second in audience voting for the People’s Choice Award. This apocalyptic thriller features Jasmine Trinca as a woman who learns that her mother may have cut a deal with a stranger (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) who just might be the devil.
Dubbed trailer

JAPAN
“All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi
This film’s title is something of a misnomer, because the Neon movie takes its time sinking into the growing friendship between a French care-facility director and a Japanese theater director with terminal cancer. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared the best-actress award at Cannes for their performances, which are delivered in a combination of French and Japanese. Hamaguchi was last in the Oscar race for 2021’s “Drive My Car,” which won the international Oscar and was the first Japanese film ever nominated for Best Picture.
Subtitled trailer

JORDAN
“Sink,” Zain Duraie
The feature debut from Jordanian writer-director Duraie focuses on the relationship between a mother and her teenage son, who has an undiagnosed mental illness. The film is the 10th submission from Jordan, though two of its previous entries were withdrawn after controversy over their subject matter.
Subtitled trailer

KAZAKHSTAN
“Abel,” Elzat Eskendir
Unexpected repercussions of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s take center stage in “Abel,” which gets its title from the name of a shepherd who makes his living on a collective farm in Kazakhstan until the farm is dissolved and privatization begins. Kazakhstan has been submitting films to the Oscars since 1992, which is around the time that the film takes place.
Trailer (no English subtitles)

KENYA
“One Woman One Bra,” Vincho Nchogu
Winner of the audience award in the narrative category at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Best First Feature award at the BFI London Film Festival, “One Woman One Bra” is the feature directorial debut of Nchogu. It deals with an unmarried woman in a rural village who must find information about her own background in order to retain ownership of the home and land where she’d been living.
Subtitled trailer

KOSOVO
“Dua,” Blerta Basholi
Like many entries from the Balkan countries in recent years, “Dua” is set during the wars that consumed that region in the 1990s. Pinea Matoshi stars as the title character, a 13-year-old girl growing up in the capital city of Pristina during wartime. The film is the second from Basholi to represent Kosovo in the Oscar race, the first being the shortlisted “Hive” in 2021. Of the country’s last six Oscar submissions going back to 2018, five have been directed by women.
Subtitled trailer

KYRGYZSTAN
“Kassandra,” Bekzat Pirmatov
A horror story drawn from Kyrgyz folklore, “Kassandra” deals with a healer who sees marks on the foreheads of pregnant women that signify their babies should not be born, and with a young woman who wakes up each morning feeling as if she’s been drained of her strength. Is it personal trauma or the Albasty, an ancient female demon?
Dubbed trailer

LATVIA
“Ulya,” Viesturs Kairišs
This film is a biopic of Latvian basketball legend Uljana Semjonova, who won multiple championships for TTT Riga and won two Olympic gold medals for the Soviet Union. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes. Kairišs has directed three of the 13 Latvian Oscar submissions, making him the only director to have more than a single entry.
Subtitled trailer

LEBANON
“Furies,” Rami Kodeih
Two sisters  come up with an elaborate all-night heist plan  in Kodeih’s thriller – the twist being that they’re breaking into a bank to “steal” their own money, which has been frozen in the 2019 Lebanese liquidity crisis that prevented depositors from accessing their savings. George Clooney and Grant Heslov are executive producers for Smokehouse Pictures.
Subtitled clip

LITHUANIA
“How to Divorce During the War,” Andrius Blazevicius
Blazevicius won the directing award in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic section for this story of an executive and a film director  who are, as the title suggests, going through a divorce in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with refugees flooding into their hometown of Vilnius. Although the premise sounds serious, the film is notable for its dark humor.
Subtitled trailer

LUXEMBOURG
“Child,” Cyrus Neshvad
Brigitte Urhausen and Malik Zidi star as parents who go to extremes to secure an organ transplant for their dying son in this drama that premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in June. Neshvad’s 2022 short “The Red Suitcase” was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Short Film category.
Subtitled trailer

MEXICO
“On the Road,” David Pablos
No connection to Jack Kerouac, this “On the Road” tells the story of a young gay hustler who falls in love with an older truck driver as they take a dangerous road trip that makes time for graphic violence and equally graphic sex. The film dominated first-round voting at the Ariel Awards, earning 13 nominations to nine for the next-biggest nominee at Mexico’s version of the Oscars. After two years of not making the shortlist, the country is trying to regain the momentum it had during a six-year stretch in which it won for “Roma” and made the shortlist four times in a row.
Subtitled trailer

MONTENEGRO
“To Hold a Mountain,” Biljana Tuturov and Petar Glomazic
While the Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Busan film festivals each qualify one jury winner for the Oscars international category, Sundance sends winners from both its international dramatic and documentary competitions. “To Hold a Mountain” won in the latter category, and was also chosen as Montenegro’s official submission, the first documentary to receive that distinction. It follows a mother and daughter in remote Montenegrin highlands who fight against government plans to build a NATO military training ground in their protected ancestral grounds.

MOROCCO
“Strawberries,” Laila Marrakchi
Inspired by reports about the exploitation of Moroccan women who travel to southern Spain to do agricultural work, “Strawberries” delves into a community of workers that includes an Olympic gold medalist in taekwondo whose career has ended in scandal. The film is the fifth consecutive Moroccan Oscar submission to have a female protagonist.

NEPAL
“Elephants in the Fog,” Abinash Bikram Shah
Shah’s drama stars Pushpa Thing Lama as the matriarch of a Kinnar community of transgender and intersex people who live in celibacy in a remote village in Nepal. It is the first feature for Shah and for Lama, a real-life Kinnar activist. The film premiered in Cannes, where it won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize.
Subtitled trailer

NETHERLANDS
“Paikar,” Dawood Hilmandi
It’s been 62 years since the Netherlands submitted its first documentary to the Oscars, 1964’s “The Human Dutch.” “Paikar,” which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, is only its second doc submission, with Afghan-Dutch director Hilmandi exploring his difficult relationship with his father, an imam who was also a mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan.  
Subtitled trailer

NORTH MACEDONIA
“17,” Kosara Mitić
Two teenage girls on a school trip come together when one of them is the victim of a sexual assault in the feature debut of director and co-writer Mitić. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Best First Feature award.
Subtitled trailer

NORWAY
“Growth of the Soil,” Hans Petter Moland
Based on the 1917 novel by Nobel-winning Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, “Growth of the Soil” is an epic-scale romantic drama set in the remote landscape of northern Norway. Moland’s “Out Stealing Horses” was Norway’s Oscar entry in 2019, and his wife, Maria Sødahl’s “Hope” was the country’s submission the following year. The defending champion in the category with “Sentimental Value,” Norway has been shortlisted in four of the last six years, and has been nominated twice.
Subtitled trailer

PALESTINE
“Citizen Osama,” Ahmed Hassouna
One of a couple of documentaries about the conflict in Gaza that premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, “Citizen Osama” follows a professional photographer trying to support his wife and infant child by turning from artistic photography to war reporting.   The last two Palestinian submissions, the historical drama “Palestine 36” and the wartime anthology film “From Ground Zero,” were both shortlisted but not nominated by Oscar voters.
Subtitled trailer

PANAMA
“Chichero,” Aarón Bromley and Arturo Montenegro
Every year, a few sports dramas seem to make it into the international Oscar race. Panama has supplied one of those films this year with this drama about an aspiring boxer and indigenous Quechan forced to migrate to Panama by the armed conflict around his home in Peru during the stormy decade of the 1980s.
Trailer (no subtitles)

PARAGUAY
“Narciso,” Marcelo Martinessi
A Paraguayan rock ’n’ roll star in found dead in his bed in this drama set in 1959 in a country being taken over by a military dictatorship. This is the 10th time Paraguay has submitted a film, with Martinessi also directing the third submission, 2018’s “The Heiresses.” He is now the first Paraguayan director to have two of the country’s entries.
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PERU
“Night Has Come,” Paolo Tizón
This documentary had its world premiere more than two years ago, at the 2024 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, before a Peruvian release in November 2025. It is the directorial debut of Tizón, who documented a group of young men as they join the Peruvian Air Force.
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PHILIPPINES
“Filipiñana,” Rafael Manuel
Based on his award-winning short film of the same name from 2020, Rafael Manuel’s satiric black comedy follows a “tee girl,” a young woman whose job at a posh country club is to place golf balls on the tee so that wealthy club members don’t have to bend down. The film won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance in January, and Manuel’s style has been compared to a dizzying array of directors: Wes Anderson, Michael Haneke, Jacques Tati, Jia Zhangke, Ruben Ostlund …
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POLAND
“Fatherland,” Pawel Pawlikowski
Poland has sent Pawlikowski’s films to the Oscars three times: in 2014, when his “Ida” won the international Oscar and was also nominated for Best Cinematography; in 2018, when “Cold War” was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography and Best Director; and this year, with another black-and-white drama set in Europe in the middle of the 20th century. “Fatherland” stars Hanns Zischler as German writer Thomas Mann and Sandra Huller as his daughter, Erika, and is based on a trip that Mann made to a divided Germany in the years after World War II, with both West and East Germany trying to claim him as one of their own. Mubi will release the film in the U.S.
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PORTUGAL
“The Scent of Things Remembered,” Antonio Ferreira
In this drama that is a coproduction between Portugal and Brazil, José Martins plays a war veteran who moves into a nursing home as he approaches the age of 80; there, he’s haunted by his past and must overcome his racism to accept help from a Black caregiver. Portugal is an unfortunate record-holder in the international category, submitting 42 films since 1980 without receiving a single nomination.
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ROMANIA
“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu
The Romanian selection committee could have chosen a different film, because “Fjord” also qualified by winning the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But they stuck with this film about a conservative religious Romanian-Norwegian couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) who come under suspicion for their child-rearing practices when they move from Romania to a more liberal community in Norway. Although none of his films have been nominated, Mungiu is one of the most impactful directors in the history of the Oscars international category: The failure of voters to even shortlist his 2007 classic “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” led to an overhaul of the voting process that opened the door for more challenging nominees. Neon is releasing “Fjord” in the U.S.
Trailer (mostly in English)

SENEGAL
“The Attachment,” Mamadou Khouma Gueye
“The Attachment” (or “Liti Liti” in its Wolof title) is a highly personal documentary from director Gueye, who returned to the town where he grew up outside Dakar to chronicle what happens as the neighborhood is destroyed to make room for a railroad. In voting by the Senegalese selection committee, the doc won out over Nicolas Sawalo Cisse’s “La Memorie du Manguier.” Senegal has only qualified six films for the Oscars, all in the past 10 years, but three of them have made the shortlist.  
Subtitled trailer

SERBIA
“Wanderlust,” Nenad Pavlovic
Pavlovic’s second feature is based on the 1957 Mica Popovic novel “Izlet,” with a screenplay by the author’s son, Jovan Popovic. The black-and-white drama deals with a young man who sets off down a river to get away from a totalitarian society in a dystopian world. The director summed it up this way: “Through a deeply existentialist lens, the film explores the fragile balance between isolation and belonging, freedom and duty, offering a poetic reflection on what it means to create, to suffer and to live.”
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SINGAPORE
“We Are All Strangers,” Anthony Chen
The final film in Chen’s “Growing Up” trilogy follows three families from different social classes in contemporary Singapore. The other two films in the trilogy, 2013’s “Ilo Ilo” and 2020’s “Wet Season,” were also Oscar entries, and so was the director’s 2023 film “The Breaking Ice.” With his country’s selection of this film, Chen breaks a tie with Eric Khoo to become the Singaporean director with the most Oscar submissions.
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SLOVAKIA
“Flood,” Martin Gonda
A coming-of-age story set against the societal repression of communist-era Czechoslovakia, “Flood” focuses on a 15-year-old girl and her single father in 1980 living in a village whose residents are undergoing forced relocation for the building of a dam. Sára Chripáková, who plays the teenage girl, won the best-actress prize at the Sun in a Net Awards, Slovakia’s version of the Oscars.
Subtitled trailer

SLOVENIA
“Fantasy,” Kukla
One-name director Kukla used her 2020 short film “Sisters” as inspiration for this feature, in which three tomboyish friends find their lives permanently altered by the arrival of a transgender woman in their neighborhood. The director has said she made the film to address the patriarchy of the Balkans.
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SOUTH KOREA
“Possible Love,” Lee Chang-dong
In 2018, Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning” made a breakthrough for South Korean cinema, becoming the country’s first movie to earn a spot on the Oscars’ international shortlist. Three more South Korean films have made the shortlist since then, and one, “Parasite,” won the international award and Best Picture. “Possible Love” is director Lee’s first film since “Burning,” an intricate story of class conflict, journalistic ethics and the difficulty of healing as explored through the friendship between a struggling working-class couple and a well-to-do documentary filmmaker and her husband. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice this year and will be released by Netflix.
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SPAIN
“La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
Netflix is also releasing this epic, which uses an unfinished Federico Garcia Lorca play to explore the lives of three gay men from 1932 to 2017. Directors Calvo and Ambrossi (known collectively as Los Javis) use a combination of Spanish actors (Carlos Gonzalez, Miguel Bernardeau, Lola Duenas), international stars (Glenn Close, Penelope Cruz) and newcomers (musician Guitarricadelafuente) to shift between eras and slide in and out of Lorca’s story of a young man who is denied entry to a social club because he’s gay. The film won the directing award in Cannes and went on to take the People’s Choice Award in Toronto, the latter award suggesting that it has the potential to make its mark beyond the international category.
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SRI LANKA
“Riverstone,” Lalith Rathnayake
Three police officers escort a condemned political prisoner across the mountainous heart of Sri Lanka in this meditative road trip that finds a quiet power struggle taking place inside the car. The film is the first Sri Lankan Oscar submission in 17 years, and only the third ever.
Subtitled trailer

SWEDEN
“Adult Supervision,” Alex Schulman
This black comedy finds three fathers chaperoning their daughters’ school field trip to a remote archipelago. The three men, who find themselves increasingly ill-equipped to deal with the girls’ power struggles, are played by Fares Fares, Linus Wahlgren and  Gustav Skarsgård (yes, a son of Stellan and brother of Alexander and Bill). Sweden has received 16 nominations and been shortlisted an additional four times over the years, but all three of its wins came for films directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Subtitled trailer

SWITZERLAND
“Who Is Still Alive,” Nicolas Wadimoff
The category’s second documentary set in Gaza is this Swiss entry from Wadimoff, a frequently political director of both narrative and nonfiction films. He has made multiple films about Palestine going back to the early 1990s, with this one featuring nine Palestinian men and women drawing their neighborhoods in chalk and telling stories of their lives during the war. The film premiered in Venice in 2025.
Subtitled trailer

TAIWAN
“A Foggy Tale,” Chen Yu-hsun
Best known for his award-winning 2020 comedy “My Missing Valentine,” Chen gets serious with this drama set during the 1950s, when Taiwan was ruled under martial law by the Kuomintang. Caitlin Fang plays a young girl in search of the remains of her brother, who has been executed as a political dissident. All three of Taiwan’s previous nominations, and its one win, came with films directed by Ang Lee.
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THAILAND
“9 Temples to Heaven,” Sompot Chidgasornpongse
Chidgasornpongse served as an assistant director to Apichatpong Weerasethakul on several movies, and that Thai icon served a producer on this film, Chidgasornpongse’s directorial debut. It is a road trip of sorts, as a man and his family make a pilgrimage to nine different temples in one day after a fortune teller informs him that his mother will soon die. The film premiered in the Directors Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
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TURKEY
“Like a Limbless Tree,” Tunç Davut
Davut, who has spent much of his career working in Turkish TV, co-wrote and directed this drama about a retired engineer who gives his longtime Syrian caregiver the money to flee the country with her sons – only to find himself taking care of the boys after she leaves without them. Turkey has been submitting films to the Oscars since 1964, including works from such esteemed auteurs as Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Semih Kaplanoğlu, but it’s never been nominated and Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” is the only Turkish film ever to make the shortlist.
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UKRAINE
“Traces,” Alisa Kovalenko
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, four of the five Ukrainian Oscar submissions have dealt with the war, and three of them have been documentaries. “Traces” is a nonfiction film about SEMA Ukraine, an organization of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence committed during the invasion. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, winning Berlinale Panorama Audience Award.
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URUGUAY
“A Loose End,” Daniel Hendler
This comic thriller from actor-turned-director Hendler follows an Argentinian police officer who tries to put his life back together in Uruguay, where he’s fled to hide from a pair of corrupt colleagues. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2025.
Subtitled trailer

VENEZUELA
“Death Has No Master,” Jorge Thielen Armand
Asia Argento plays the heiress to an aging cacao plantation that has been occupied by workers who refuse to leave in this drama by Armand, the first Venezuelan filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. The film appeared in the Directors Fortnight section at Cannes this year.
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VIETNAM
“Spirit Guardians: The Last Secret of the First Emperor,” Nguyen Phan Quang Binh
The largest production in Vietnamese  history is an epic set in the Đinh dynasty of the 10th century. Vietnam has been submitting a mixture of historical dramas, action films and lighter fare since 1993, but its only nomination came with its first entry, “The Scent of Green Papaya.”   
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Films that qualified with festival wins

These films became eligible because they won Oscar-qualifying awards at six different film festivals. In the case of the top winners from Cannes and Venice and the documentary winner from Sundance, the films were also submitted by their home countries and would have qualified regardless of their festival wins.

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu
See: Romania

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
“Shame and Money,” Visar Morina
This film qualified for the Oscars without even knowing it: It won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic award at the Sundance Film Festival on Feb. 1, exactly three months before the Academy announced that the winner of that award, and awards at five other festivals, would be eligible even if it wasn’t submitted by its country of origin. In this case, the country of origin might have been hard to determine, because “Shame and Money” is an Albanian-language co-production of Germany, Kosovo, Slovenia, Albania, North Macedonia and Belgium. It is set in the countryside and in the capital city in Kosovo, where a proud farmer (Astrit Kabashi) struggles to support his family in a battered economy.
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SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
“To Hold a Mountain,” Biljana Tuturov and Petar Glomazic
See: Montenegro

BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Yellow Letters,” Ilker Çatak
Çatak, a German-born director of Turkish origin, was in the Oscar race three years ago with “The Teachers’ Lounge,” which was nominated as Germany’s submission. “Yellow Letters” qualified without a country attached by winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. It is another film about tough economic times, seen in this case through the eyes of a Turkish playwright and an actress who lose their jobs after the government deems their latest play “too political.”
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TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Angh,” Theja Rio
India will have two films in race this year, because its official submission of “Gondahl” will be joined by this film, which won the newly Oscar-qualifying jury award in the Platform program. The film is set in the 1960s in the Nagaland region in northeast India, where the last chief of an abandoned village tries to keep the old traditions alive after the arrival of a Christian missionary. It is the feature debut of director Rio.
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VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Woman Unknown,” May el-Toukhy
See: Denmark

BUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
This festival will take place from Oct. 6-15 in Busan, South Korea. A jury headed by Chinese director Zhang Yimou will give an award to one of 13 Asian films in the main competition, none of which have been announced as submissions by their countries of origin.  Films competing for the award include Nanako Hirose’s “Between Two Lovers,” Gu You’s “The First Taste of Loneliness,” Eddie Cahyono’s “My Mother,” Majid Majidi’s “Midday Meal,” Yosep Anggi Noen’s “The Sea Speaks His Name” and Kim Jung-hoon’s “Shaving.”

Normally, a film would need to have a theatrical release in its home country between Oct. 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026, which wouldn’t be possible for the movies having their world premieres in Busan. But that requirement is waived for films that qualify by winning festival awards, so the Busan winner will receive an extension to file paperwork to enter the race, and will not need a theatrical release.

An Ohio jury has returned multiple guilty verdicts against former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn in the murder earlier this year of his wife Ashley Flynn.

Caleb Flynn, a 40-year-old former worship pastor who competed in 2013 on American Idol, sobbed after nine guilty verdicts were read finding him guilty of aggravated murder, three counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault and three counts of tampering with evidence.

The murder occurred in the Flynn’s home in Tipp City, Ohio, about 20 miles outside Dayton, in the early morning hours of February 16, 2026. The 37-year-old woman was fatally shot in the head as she slept in her bed.

Opening statements for the trial began on Friday, September 18, and closing arguments ended Tuesday, September 29. The Ohio jury deliberated for just two hours today following a week of trial testimony. During that week, Flynn’s mistress Alleigha Botner, 24, a worship leader at the same Tipp City church as Flynn, read from more than 100,000 text messages between herself and Flynn, some of which indicated Flynn’s murderous intentions.

In one exchange, Flynn wrote, “I was up until 4 a.m. last night crying, literally trying to think of ways to kill her and not go to jail. If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. That is how dark and how hateful I feel.”

The night before the murder, Flynn wrote to Botner, “I choose you. I’m free. Actions will come tomorrow, February 16, a day I’ll never forget.” Botner has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

After the murder, Flynn told police that his wife had been shot by an intruder. Police early on suspected that the crime scene had been staged to look like a burglary.

Ashley Flynn was fatally shot while the couple’s two daughters, then ages 9 and 11, were asleep in the next room.

Caleb Flynn’s appearance on American Idol is largely remembered for his emotional tributes to his wife. During his “Road To Hollywood” interview from 2013, Flynn said “music is all I know” and that he’d been encouraged to audition by Ashley. “I absolutely love the Lord, and I love my wife more than anything. She is very, very pretty. I love her. I’m just a normal person who absolutely loves to sing more than anything in the world.”