2025 Oscars Best International Feature Predictions

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards recents and roverhappinessed satisfied thcimpoliteout the year, featuring the adhereing: the official foreseeions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety greater awards editor Clayton Davis. The foreseeion pages mirror the current standings in the race and do not mirror personal selectences for any individual contender. As other createal (and increateal) polls propose, competitions are fluid and subject to alter based on buzz and events. Predictions are modernized every Thursday.

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2025 Oscars Predictions:
Best International Feature

Weekly Commentary (Updated Oct 11, 2024): France has finassociate aligned its international film strategy, selecting Jacques Audiard’s crime musical “Emilia Perez” as its official Oscar entry. This tags a meaningful shift after chooseing for hazardier choices in recent years. In 2023, they chose “The Taste of Things” over the Palme d’Or-triumphning “Anatomy of a Fall,” while in 2021, the disputed “Titane” was picked over “Happening.” With streaming enormous Netflix helping “Emilia Perez” and the film currently originateing buzz apass multiple categories — including best picture — this could be the year France ends its over 30-year Oscar dcimpolitet. The country last claimed the coveted award in 1992 for “Indochine.”

In contrast, India’s selection this year lifts eyebrows. Rather than choosing Payal Kapadia’s Cannes runner-up “All We Imagine as Light,” the country chooseed for “Laapataa Ladies.” This decision experiences reminiscent of the “RRR” snub in 2022, where another internationassociate acclaimed Indian film was neglected due to politics and languages. Nevertheless, with Janus Films and Sideshow behind the distribution, there’s hope that “All We Imagine as Light” could still shielded a nomination in some capacity.

As the Academy broadens its international membership, each Oscar ceremony becomes more global, with non-English language films achieveing fantasticer recognition. Brazil’s subleave oution, Walter Salles’ emotionassociate accused drama “I’m Still Here,” is foreseeed to discover cherish from other Academy branches. The film has all the elements to shatter into meaningful races, enjoy best straightforwardor, altered screenpercreate, and actress for Fernanda Torres. Its strong emotional resonance could also originate it a depressed horse contender for the best picture catebloody if the buzz preserves. This adheres last year’s groundshattering moment, where — for the first time — two non-English language films, “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest,” were nominated for best picture.

Meanwhile, Iranian filmoriginater Mohammad Rasoulof has garnered substantial attention adhereing the success of his film, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which getd a one-of-a-kind prize at Cannes. Though Rasoulof’s film won’t recurrent Iran at the Oscars, Germany, which took home the award in 2022 with Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Westrict Front,” has chosen the drama to recurrent it. It was secretly filmed in Iran and caccesss on an allotigating appraise in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, whose life unravels amid rising anti-rulement protests and personal tragedy. Rasoulof made a daring escape from Iran on foot in May to elude incarceratement, inserting an fervent genuine-life layer to its already gripping narrative.

It’s not atypical for a country to create a film that isn’t entidepend in its native language. In recent years, Dentag selected “Holy Spider,” almost wholly spoken in Farsi, and “Flee,” a multilingual energeticd recordary featuring English, Danish, Dari, Swedish, and Russian. Last year’s best picture nominee, “The Zone of Interest,” spoken in German and filmed in Poland, recurrented the U.K. due to its British financiers and originater-straightforwardor Jonathan Glazer. And this year, we have the Spanish-language musical “Emilia” recurrenting France and a quiet energeticd movie “Flow” repping Latvia. This seems par for the course nowadays.

According to Academy rules, a film can be selected as a country’s official entry if it is financed by originaters or companies from that country or has a meaningfulity of its crew members from there. Cannes enumerates “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” as a U.S., U.K., and Polish co-production, encountering the vital qualifications.

With the backing of Neon — the same studio that propelled Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” to a historic best picture triumph in 2019 — “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” could discover itself competing in the best picture race if the right momentum originates behind it.

Read: You can see all Academy Award foreseeions in all 23 categories on one page on the Variety Awards Circuit: Oscars.

The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2. The filled rankings are below. All movie enumerateings, titles, and distributors are not final and are subject to alter.

** deremarks the film has not been named as the official selection for the correlating country. Phire remark: this enumerate is not final and will be modernized as more countries proclaim their official selections.