International Oscar Update: A Boat Load of Official Contenders

by Nathaniel R

We have now reached the season where it's hard to keep up with all the updates and it will keep on being this way throughout September. Nevertheless I'm at least keeping the submission charts up to date. At this writing twenty-five countries have selected their official contender for Best International Feature Film. We can safely expect another 60 or so countries to submit by the deadline of October 1. In terms of participation the category peaked at 97 contenders back in 2020 and has been dipping slightly since and has returned to 2010 numbers (the high 80s).

After the jump the "new" announcements since our last update are in bold and I've highlighted one new contender per chart for fun...

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Venice: Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice...

NO OTHER CHOICE

In 2005, Costa-Gavras adapted Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax into Le Couperet, a stark meditation on the cruelty and dehumanization embedded in the modern workplace. Nearly two decades later, Park Chan-wook returns to the same source material with No Other Choice, dedicating the film to Gavras, and in doing so asserting himself once more as one of the most audacious and precise filmmakers alive. Here is a director capable of merging Korean cultural specificity with an elegance of cinematic form so distinctive that only he could achieve it—where narrative, composition, and moral complexity are intertwined to such an extent that a single viewing can scarcely contain their richness.

At the center is Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), head of a company producing security and specialty papers, who finds himself suddenly dispossessed of the only role matching his qualifications...

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Venice: Noah Baumbach's Awards Hopeful "Jay Kelly"

by Elisa Giudici

George Clooney and Adam Sandler in "JAY KELLY" Photo by Peter Mountain © 2025 Netflix ,Inc

When Noah Baumbach presented White Noise on Netflix, expectations were sky-high: a star-studded cast, major ambitions, and the aura of a filmmaker fresh off Marriage Story. The film’s muted reception, however, seemed to threaten his trajectory, leaving a lingering sense of failure. Jay Kelly, his latest feature, feels like a response to that setback. Not so much a radical departure, but a project with a clearer aim: to offer George Clooney and Adam Sandler two roles carefully designed for visibility, prestige, and perhaps even awards...

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Venice: Yorgos Lanthimos Returns with "Bugonia"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

The cage match comes first: a ruthless CEO named Michelle (Emma Stone) wakes in a crumbling suburban house, bound and outmaneuvered by Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a low-wage packer with a ponytail, a backyard of beehives, and a head full of conspiracy podcasts. With help from his guileless cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy gives her three days to lead them to her spaceship before a looming lunar eclipse. Money won’t tempt him; sex won’t distract him—he and Don have even resorted to DIY chemical castration to blunt any “alien” manipulation. The stakes sound absurd, but the menace is real: in Lanthimos’s world, delusion can be methodical, rage can be lucid, and the invisible can prove terrifyingly effective...

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Venice: Paolo Sorrentino returns with "The Grace"

by Elisa Giudici, reporting once again from Venice 

Toni Servillo stars in "The Grace". Image credit: Andrea Pirrello

For a director who has already devoted two films to real and controversial Italian prime ministers (Giulio Andreotti and Silvio Berlusconi), two series to fictional popes, and one feature to the president of the Italian Republic (a largely ceremonial role compared to its French or American counterparts), La Grazia (The Grace) plays like a natural progression. Yet it still manages to surprise. What's particularly astonishing is how Sorrentino shot a €13 million production in some of Italy’s most symbolic locations for months—La Scala included, packed with extras—without a single leak...

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