2025 Oscars: Best International Feature Predictions
Marcus Jones
Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
Prior to the shortlists announcement, there had definitely been folks walking around in denial about “Emilia Pérez” being the dominant Best International Feature contender; less so because of negative feelings about the Netflix film, and more because the raft of submissions from all over the world have been so good this year.
Looking at the Oscars 2025 shortlists generally, Jacques Audiard’s musical got recognized just about everywhere it would have wanted to, even nabbing two spots on the Best Original Song shortlist. But looking at the Best International Feature list specifically, almost none of the film’s international peers can say the same.
However, the normally Eurocentric Best International Feature slate now also includes films from Africa, the Middle East, South America, and Asia, and though it is more like one designated contender per continent, it is a sign that voters are getting marginally better at expanding their cinematic palettes.
When it comes to what will be nominated, the diversity is likely to be reflected more within the films than with the countries they are representing. For example, “Emilia Pérez,” France’s submission, mostly takes place in Mexico, centering on a Narco leader that transitions into a woman. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is about the unraveling of an Iranian judge, yet is Germany’s Oscar submission. “Flow” could be set in Latvia, the country that submitted the film into the Best International Feature race, but none of the animal characters talk, and there’s not a lot of signifiers in the film’s landscape to indicate it being set anywhere specific in the world.
“I’m Still Here” is the only film submitted by a country outside of Europe that feels like a lock for a nomination, having both been a critical darling and a major box office hit in Brazil (home to what feels like the most engaged online fans in the world). Thailand’s submission “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies,” the only film submitted by a country in Asia to make the shortlist, is in a similar boat being beloved by its country, but has not been as widely seen by Oscar voters. Never says never, as they love a discovery.
It should be noted as well that Ireland’s submission “Kneecap” is on an upswing, having done incredibly well at the British Independent Film Awards, and even earned a spot on the Best Original Song shortlist for the track “Sick in the Head,” but it mostly feels like it is fighting for the fifth nomination slot with Italy’s submission “Vermiglio,” which won quite a few awards on the fall film festival circuit. As highly decorated as both films are, the former is a Sony Pictures Classics release, and the latter is a Sideshow/Janus Films release, and both those studios already have their eggs in the basket of different films that are on even more voters’ radars (“I’m Still Here” and “Flow,” respectively.)
Contenders are listed in alphabetical order, below.
Frontrunners:
“Emilia Pérez” (Jacques Audiard, France)
“Flow” (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia)
“I’m Still Here” (Walter Salles, Brazil)
“Kneecap” (Rich Peppiatt, Ireland)
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany)
Contenders:
“Armand” (Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, Norway)
“Dahomey” (Mati Diop, Senegal)
“From Ground Zero” (Various Directors, Palestine)
“The Girl With the Needle” (Magnus von Horn, Denmark)
“How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” (Pat Boonnitipat, Thailand)
“Universal Language” (Matthew Rankin, Canada)
“Santosh” (Sandhya Suri, United Kingdom)
“Touch” (Baltasar Kormákur, Iceland)
“Vermiglio” (Maura Delpero, Italy)
“Waves” (Jiří Mádl, Czech Republic)
