The Oscars Best International Feature Film category has broken its record for the number of submissions, assigning 105 different films to voters who have volunteered to cast ballots in the first round of voting. That marks the first time submissions have ever hit triple digits, and it blows past the old record of 93 eligible films, which was set in 2020.
For the past three years, the number of qualifying films has been in the mid-to-high 80s. But this year’s slate includes the first-ever submissions from Cyprus, El Salvador and Rwanda, the first in 29 years from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the first in 17 years from Sri Lanka.
The record total was also aided by a change in the longtime Academy rule that restricted the category to one film per country. For the first time, additional films could qualify by winning the top award at one of six different film festivals: Sundance, which qualified both narrative and documentary winners, and Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Busan, which qualified the winner of their top prize.
(Of the seven films that qualified via film festivals, three were also submitted by their countries of origin.)
The list of films below is not the official final list, which will be released before shortlist voting begins in December. But on Friday, the Academy emailed members who had opted to vote in the category, assigning each member to one of nine different groups. TheWrap acquired all of the lists, in which each group was given 11 or 12 film titles that are required viewing in order for a member’s vote to count.
While there’s still a chance that something on this list of 105 films will later be found to be ineligible, the assignments lists are generally identical to the final slate of qualifying films.
The lists of mandatory viewing in each group are constructed to give every group a range of languages, regions and genres, and to require similar amounts of viewing time for each group. The highest-profile films are generally spread out among the groups, although this year includes a startling concentration in Group 5, where the 12 films include Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner “Fjord,” two-time nominee Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” and 2021 winner Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” all strong favorites to make the 15-film shortlist and perhaps to be among the final five nominees.
Voters are encouraged to see as many films as they can from all groups, but they can only vote if they’ve seen everything in their assigned group. All of the films will be available in the members-only Academy Screening Room devoted to the international category, which currently has 45 of the eligible films in the category. More films are added every Friday.
Members will vote for their 15 favorites from Dec. 7 to Dec. 11, with the top vote-getters advancing to a shortlist that will be announced on Dec. 15.
For the first time, the Academy has listed and arranged the films in alphabetical order by title rather than by country of submission. This coincides with the award officially going to the film itself rather than to the country, as it has in previous years.
Here is the list of assigned films, with director and country of submission (or qualifying film festival). TheWrap has compiled a master list with descriptions of each film and links to trailers. That list is available here.
“Abel,” Elzat Eskendir (Kazakhstan) “Adult Supervision,” Alex Schulman (Sweden) “All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan) “Angh,” Theja Rio (Toronto International Film Festival: Platform Prize) “Aontas,” Damian McCann (Ireland)
“Becoming Human,” Poley Ly (Cambodia) “Ben’Imana,” Marie Clementine Dusabejambo (Rwanda) “Broken Vein,” Yannis Economides (Greece) “Child,” Cyrus Neshvad (Luxembourg) “Chichero,” Aaron Bromley andArturo Montenegro (Panama) “Citizen Osama,” Ahmed Hassouna (Palestine) “The Condor Daughter,” Alvaro Olmos Torrico (Bolivia) “Cordillera de Fuego,” Jayro Bustamante(Guatemala) “Coward,” Lukas Dhont (Belgium) “Death Has No Master,” Jorge Thielen Armand (Venezuela) “Dear Ajayi,” Damilola Orimogunje (Nigeria) “The Dreamed Adventure,” Valeska Grisebach (Bulgaria) “Dua,” Blerta Basholi (Kosovo) “Elephants in the Fog,” Abinash Bikram Shah (Nepal) “En el Camino,” David Pablos (Mexico) “Everytime,” Sandra Wollner (Germany) “Fantasy,” Kukla (Slovenia) “Fatherland,” Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland) “Filipinana,” Rafael Manuel (Philippines) “First Light,” James J. Robinson (Australia) “Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu (Romania) “Flood,” Martin Gonda (Slovakia) “A Foggy Tale,”Chen Yu-hsun (Taiwan) “Four Seasons in Java,” Kamila Andini (Indonesia) “The Fox King,”Woo Ming Jin (Malaysia) “Furies,” Rami Kodeih (Lebanon) “God Will Not Help,” Hana Jusic (Croatia) “Gondhal,” Santosh Davakhar (India) “The Ground Beneath Our Feet,” Yrsa Roca Fannberg (Iceland) “Growth of the Soil,” Hans Petter Moland (Norway) “Gugu’s World,” Allan Deberton (Brazil) “Guria,” Levan Koguashvili (Georgia) “Hanging by a Wire,” Mohammed Ali Naqvi (Pakistan) “Hiedra,” Ana Cristina Barragan (Ecuador) “Hold Onto Me,” Myrsini Aristidou (Cyprus) “How to Divorce During the War,”Andrius Blazevicius (Lithuania)
“If Pigeons Turned to Gold,” Pepa Lubokacki (Czech Republic) “If We Don’t Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night,” Kim Torres (Costa Rica) “In the Land of Arto,” Tamara Stepanyan (Armenia) “Independence: Keeper of theDecree,” Tamir Bat-Ulzii (Mongolia) “Kassandra,” Bekzat Pirmatov (Kyrgyzstan) “La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Spain) “Land of Angels,” Babak Khajehpasha (Iran) “Like a Limbless Tree,” Tunc Davut (Turkey) “Liti Liti,” Mamadou Khouma Gueye (Senegal) “A Loose End,” Daniel Hendler (Uruguay) “Mabanda,” Kang Quintus (Cameroon) “Malecon,” Carlos Larrazabal (Cuba) “Mārama,” Taratoa Stappard (New Zealand) “A Matter of Life and Death,” Anas Ba-Tahaf (Saudi Arabia) “Melodrama,” Andres Farias (Dominican Republic) “The Meltdown,” Manuela Martelli (Chile) “Midday Meal,” Majid Majidi (Busan International Film Festival: Best Film Award) “Minotaur,”Andrey Zvyagintsev (France) “Narciso,” Marcelo Martinessi (Paraguay) “Night Has Come,” Paolo Tizon (Peru) “Nina Roza,” Genevieve Dulude-de Celles (Canada) “9 Temples to Heaven,” Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Thailand) “No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman,” Halkawt Mustafa (Iraq) “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East,” Wen Muye (China) “One Woman One Bra,” Vincho Nchogu (Kenya) “The Other Side of the Sun,”Tawfik Sabouni (Syria) “Our Erika,” German Golub (Estonia) “Paikar,” Dawood Hilmandi (Netherlands) “Possible Love,” Lee Chang-dong (South Korea) “Rains Over Babel,” Gala del Sol (Colombia) “Rehearsals for a Revolution,” Pegah Ahangarani (United Kingdom) “Riverstone,” Lalith Rathnayake (Sri Lanka) “Roid,” Mejbaur Rahman Sumon (Bangladesh) “Roqia,” Yanis Koussim (Algeria) “Rose,” Markus Schleinzer (Austria) “Rumba Royale,” Yohane Dean Lengol and Hamed Mobasser (Democratic Republic of the Congo) “The Scent of Things Remembered,” Antonio Ferreira (Portugal) “17,” Kosara Mitic (North Macedonia) “Shame and Money,” Visar Morina (Sundance Film Festival: World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Dramatic) “Silent Friend,” Ildiko Enyedi (Hungary) “Sink,” Zain Duraie (Jordan) “Sons of the Neon Night,” Juno Mak (Hong Kong) “Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad) “The Spiral,” Paolo Stippoli (Italy) “Spirit Guardians: The Last Secret of the First Emperor,” Nguyen Phan Quang Bihn (Vietnam) “The Squirrel,” Markus Lehmusruusu (Finland) “A State Film,” Roland Sejko (Albania) “Strawberries,” Laila Marrakchi (Morocco) “The Stories,” Abu Bakr Shawky (Egypt) “Taghiyev: School,” Zaur Gasimli (Azerbaijan) “Tell Me Everything,” Moshe Rosenthal (Israel) “To Hold a Mountain,” Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazic (Montenegro) “Traces,” Alisa Kovalenko (Ukraine) “Ulya,” Viesturs Kairiss (Latvia) “Variations on a Theme,” Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs (South Africa) “Vertices,” Arturo Lopez Rodas (El Salvador) “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” Laura Casabe (Argentina) “Wanderlust,” Nenad Pavlovic (Serbia) “We Are All Strangers,” Anthony Chen (Singapore) “Who Is Still Alive,” Nicolas Wadimoff (Switzerland) “The Widower,” Hari Secic (Bosnia and Hervegovina) “Woman Unknown,” May el-Toukhy (Denmark) “Yellow Letters,” Ilker Çatak (Berlin International Film Festival: Golden Bear) “Żejtune,” Alex Camilleri (Malta)
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