While the Hollywood-based festival had already announced a slate of red carpet premieres that included Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” and Craig Brewer’s “Song Sung Blue” as the opening- and closing-night films, respectively, Tuesday’s announcement fills out the lineup with more than 100 new special screenings, documentaries and international films, including 19 films competing in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category.

The festival will include Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” which  won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September; Sorrentino’s “La Grazia,” Herzog’s “Ghost Elephants,” Kaufman’s “How to Shoot a Ghost” and Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” all of which also premiered in Venice; and Cannes Film Festival premieres that include Fatih Akin’s “Amrum,” Lav Diaz’s “Magellan,” Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors,” the Dardenne brothers’ “Young Mothers,” Simón Mesa Soto’s “A Poet,” Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s “A Useful Ghost” and Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling.”

The festival will screen films from 56 different countries over a five-day span from Oct. 22-26 in Los Angeles.

Guillermo del Toro, who will serve as the festival’s guest artistic director, has programmed four films: Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” Federico Fellini’s “Casanova,” Ridley Scott’s “The Duellists” and Pupi Avati’s “Arcane Sorcerer.”

Here is the full list of feature films in the festival. Ticket information and the list of shorts is available at fest.afi.com.

Red Carpet Premieres
“Christy,” David Michôd
“Dead Man’s Wire,” Gus Van Sant
“Jay Kelly,” Noah Baumbach
“Nuremberg,” James Vanderbilt
“Song Sung Blue,” Craig Brewer
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” Scott Cooper
“The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants,” Derek Drymon
(Preceded by: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 — Lost in New Jersey,” Kent Seki)

Special Screenings
“Bad Apples,” Jonatan Etzler
“Bugonia,” Yorgos Lanthimos
“The Choral,” Alan Bennett
“The Chronology of Water,” Kristen Stewart
“Is This Thing On?” Bradley Cooper
“A Magnificent Life (Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol) ” Sylvain Chomet
“Merrily We Roll Along,” Maria Friedman
“Nebraska Live,” Thom Zimny
“Rebuilding,” Max Walker-Silverman
“Rental Family,” Hikari
“The Testament of Ann Lee,” Mona Fastvold
“Train Dreams,” Clint Bentley

Luminaries
“Amrum,” Fatih Akin
“Father Mother Sister Brother,” Jim Jarmusch
“Ghost Elephants,” Werner Herzog
“How to Shoot a Ghost,” Charlie Kaufman
“Kontinental ’25,” Radu Jude
“La Grazia,” Paolo Sorrentino
“Magellan (Magalhães),” Lav Diaz
“Miroirs No. 3,” Christian Petzold
“Peter Hujar’s Day,” Ira Sachs
“Silent Friend,” Ildikó Enyedi
“The Stranger (L’Étranger),” François Ozon
“Two Prosecutors,” Sergei Loznitsa
“What Does That Nature Say to You,” Hong Sang-soo
“Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères),” Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Discovery
“Amoeba,” Tan Siyou
“Fantasy Life,” Matthew Shear
“Happy Birthday,” Sarah Goher
“Honeyjoon,” Lilian T. Mehrel
“Junkie,” William Means
“Lucky Lu,” Lloyd Lee Choi
“My Father’s Shadow,” Akinola Davies Jr.
“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (La Misteriosa Mirada del Flamenco),” Diego Céspedes
“The Plague,” Charlie Polinger
“A Poet (Un Poeta),” Simón Mesa Soto
“The President’s Cake (Mamlaket al-Qasab),” Hasan Hadi
“Silent Rebellion (À Bras-le-Corps),” Marie-Elsa Sgualdo
“Sound of Falling (In die Sonne Schauen),” Mascha Schilinski”A Useful Ghost (Pee Chai Dai Ka),” Ratchapoom Boonbunchachok
“We Believe You (On Vous Croit),” Charlotte Devillers, Arnaud Dufeys

World Cinema
“1001 Frames,” Mehrnoush Alia
“All That’s Left of You,” Cherien Dabis
“Case 137 (Dossier 137),” Dominik Moll
“The Currents (Las Corrientes),” Milagros Mumenthaler
“Divine Comedy (Komedié Elahi),” Ali Asgari
“Eagles of the Republic,” Tarik Saleh
“The Great Arch (L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche),” Stéphane Demoustier
“Kokuho,” Sang-il Lee
“Left-Handed Girl,” Shih-Ching Tsou
“Living the Land (Sheng Xi Zhi Di),” Huo Meng
“The Love That Remains (Ástin Sem Eftir Er),” Hlynur Pálmason
“Olmo,” Fernando Eimbcke
“Orphan (Árva),” László Nemes
“Palestine 36,” Annemarie Jacir
“Phantoms of July (Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen),” Julian Radlmaier
“Pin de Fartie,” Alejo Moguillansky
“Promised Sky (Promis le Ciel),” Erige Sehiri
“Romería,” Carla Simón
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania
“Yes,” Nadav Lapid

Documentary
“Andy Kaufman Is Me,” Clay Tweel
“Below the Clouds (Sotto le Nuvole),” Gianfranco Rosi
“Cover-Up,” Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus
“The Eyes of Ghana,” Ben Proudfoot
“Fiume o Morte!” Igor Bezinović
“The Hanging of Stuart Cornfeld,” Joan Bofill Amargós
“Holding Liat,” Brandon Kramer
“I Was Born This Way,” Daniel Junge, Sam Pollard
“The King of Color,” Patrick Creadon
“Love+War,” Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
“My Armenian Phantoms (Mes Fantômes Arméniens),” Tamara Stepanyan
“The Ozu Diaries,” Daniel Raim
“Seeds,” Brittany Shyne
“Selena y Los Dinos,” Isabel Castro
“The Tale of Silyan,” Tamara Kotevska

After Dark
“By Design,” Amanda Krame
“Endless Cookie,” Seth Scriver, Peter Scriver
“F—toys,” Annapurna Sriram
“Mārama,” Taratoa Stappard
“Morte Cucina,” Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
“Straight Circle,” Oscar Hudson

Guest Artistic Director
“The Arcane Sorcerer,” Pupi Avati
“Barry Lyndon,” Stanley Kubrick
“The Duellists,” Ridley Scott
“Fellini’s Casanova,” Federico Fellini

The post Jim Jarmusch, Werner Herzog, Charlie Kaufman Movies Headed to AFI Fest appeared first on TheWrap.

So far, entries include a number of films dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those include Israel’s entry, “The Sea,” which deals with a young Palestinian boy trying to see the sea for the first time; when it became the Israeli selection by winning the top prize at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, the government slammed the selection and threatened to withdraw funding from the Ophirs.

Tunisia, meanwhile, has submitted “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which dramatizes a phone call to emergency services from a 5-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car with dead family members; Jordan has entered “All That’s Left of You,” about a confrontation between a Palestinian teen protester and Israeli soldiers; and Palestine has gone with “Palestine 36,” a historical drama about the region’s colonial past.

Other entries deal with climate change (Australia, North Macedonia), fascism and dictatorships (Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, Paraguay, Sweden), LGBTQ issues (Chile, the Czech Republic) and the war in Ukraine (Denmark, Ireland, Ukraine). And France’s entry, “It Was Just an Accident” from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes for its wrenching look at the physical and emotional residue of state-sponsored torture.

So far, the submissions include more than 20 films from female directors and about a dozen documentaries. To be eligible, a film must have been released in its home country between Oct. 1, 2024 and Sept. 30, 2025 and must have predominantly non-English dialogue. Each country is allowed to submit a single film, which must be chosen by a selection committee approved by the Academy.

TheWrap has compiled a list of the announced entries, with links to trailers when available. Note: These films have been announced but have not necessarily been vetted by the Academy to determine their eligibility. It’s likely that some of them will be deemed ineligible and will not be included when Academy voters are given their lists of required viewing in late October, and again when the final list of qualifying films is released closer to the end of the year.

In recent years, the international category has typically contained between 85 and 93 films. TheWrap will update this list as additional films are added, and will remove films that don’t qualify once the viewing assignments go out.

ALBANIA
“Luna Park,” Florenc Papas
A coming-of-age drama set amid the civil unrest and economic collapse in Albania in the late 1990s, “Luna Park” is the second feature for Papas. In a story that the director has said was inspired by events from his own childhood, a young man and his single mother flee the country in search of a better and safer life in Greece.
Subtitled trailer

ARGENTINA
“Belén,” Dolores Fonzi
Argentina’s last nomination came for 2022’s legal drama “Argentina, 1985,” and the country has returned this year with another film also based on an actual court case. Working from the nonfiction book “Somos Belén” by Ana Correa, director Dolores Fonzi also stars as an attorney who takes the case of a woman unjustly convicted of committing an illegal abortion, igniting a nationwide women’s movement.
Subtitled trailer

ARMENIA
“My Armenian Phantoms,” Tamara Stepanyan
Stepanyan’s film is a highly personal documentary about her life in cinema, which began when she appeared in a film at the age of 7, and her late father’s career as an actor.  It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
Subtitled clip

AUSTRALIA
“The Wolves Always Come Out at Night,” Gabrielle Brady
The second feature from director Brady mixes fiction and nonfiction techniques to tell the story of a Mongolian couple who are forced to move to the city after climate change makes their nomadic lifestyle as shepherds unsustainable. The Australian selection committee was unanimous in its choice of the film, which it called “a significant and brilliantly crafted feature film that everyone in the committee regarded as requisite cinema viewing.”
Subtitled trailer

AUSTRIA
“Peacock,” Bernhard Wenger
The feature debut of Wenger is a comedy starring Albrecht Schuch (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) as a man who rents himself out as a companion-for-hire for any and all occasions. The film won the Best First Feature award at the Stockholm International Film Festival and landed a U.S. distribution deal with Oscilloscope.
Subtitled trailer

AZERBAIJAN
“Taghiyev: Oil,” Zaur Gasimli
This historical drama is the first in a series of planned films about the life of Azerbaijani magnate and philanthropist Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, a major figure in the country from the middle of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th. Filming reportedly took place over a five-year period.
Trailer (no English subtitles)

BANGLADESH
“A House Named Shahana,” Leesa Gazi
A young woman who was married to an Englishman she’d never met as a teenager returns to her native Bangladesh to face the stigma of being a divorcee in Gazi’s adaptation of her 2011 novella. The film is the narrative feature debut for the writer, playwright, actress and director, and it won the Film Critics Gender Sensitivity award after its premiere at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in 2023.  
Subtitled trailer

BELGIUM
“Young Mothers,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
Films by the Dardenne brothers have represented Belgium in the Oscars international race five times since 1999 – but despite winning two Palme d’Ors and acquiring a reputation as formidable auteurs, they’ve never had a film nominated or even shortlisted. Their latest work is another socio-realist drama, this one about a group of young mothers who live together in a shelter. It won the screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Subtitled trailer

BHUTAN
“I, the Song,” Dechen Roder
A young schoolteacher’s life is upended when a sexually-explicit video appears online featuring a woman who looks just like her. Roder won the best director award at the 2024 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for the movie, which also won eight awards at the Bhutan Natioinal Film Awards. It is Bhutan’s fourth Oscar submission, with two of the country’s previous entries making the shortlist and one, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” receiving a nomination.
Subtitled trailer

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
“Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny,” Jasmila Žbanić
This biographical documentary tells the story of Emerik Blum, a businessman who founded the company Energoinvest and pioneered a democratic management style that gave workers a say in how the company was run. It’s the third film by Žbanić to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Oscars; she previously directed one of the country’s two nominated films, the 2020 drama “Quo Vadis, Aida?”
Subtitled trailer

BRAZIL
“The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho
A year after winning the international Oscar for “I’m Still Here,” Brazil has submitted another film set during the country’s military dictatorship of the 1970s – but “The Secret Agent” is less a political film than a quiet thriller about a former teacher who’s hiding from hitmen and exploring his past. Mendonça Filho’s previous films “Neighbouring Sounds” and “Pictures of Ghosts” were the Brazilian Oscar entries in 2013 and 2023, respectively.  
Subtitled trailer

BULGARIA
“Tarika,” Milko Lazarov
Director Lazarov draws from folk tales and magical realism in this film about a rural father who must protect his daughter from ignorant and superstitious villagers when she’s ostracized after developing a bone condition. The film premiered at the London Film Festival  in 2024.
Subtitled trailer

CAMBODIA
“Tenement,” Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea
A horror film in which a young woman moves into the apartment building where her late mother used to live, “Tenement” nods to both personal and societal trauma. The film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2024 and was released in Cambodia in November of that year.
Subtitled trailer

CANADA
“The Things You Kill,” Alireza Khatami
Canada’s entry is a case study in how international a single film can be: It’s a Turkish-language mystery written and directed by a filmmaker who was born in Iran and now lives in Canada. Turkish actor Ekin Koç stars as a university professor, back home after a stint in the U.S., who hires a gardener to avenge the suspicious death of his mother.
Subtitled trailer

CHINA
“Dead to Rights,” Shen Ao
The second Chinese Oscar entry set during the Nanjing Massacre in World War II (the first being “The Flowers of War,” with Christian Bale), “Dead to Rights” focuses on Chinese civilians who hide in a photo studio and collect photos showing evidence of the Japanese army’s atrocities. It is based on the real-life Huadong Photo Studio, where an apprentice compiled crucial evidence used in war crimes trials.
Subtitled trailer

CHILE
“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Diego Céspedes
The feature debut of writer-director Céspedes, this film is set in a remote Chilean mining town, where a young girl in a transgender commune must fight prejudice and fear when an unknown illness begins to spread. The film won the top award in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where the jury called it “raw and powerful and yet funny and wild.”
Subtitled clip

COLOMBIA
“A Poet,” Simon Mesa Soto
The runner-up to “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” in the Un Certain Regard section, “A Poet” is a black comedy about the rocky friendship between an aging, unsuccessful poet and a working-class teenager. 1-2 Special will be releasing the film in the U.S.
Subtitled trailer

COSTA RICA
“The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener,” Juan Manuel Fernández
This examination of the case in which a Catholic priest was convicted of sexual abuse is the first documentary to be submitted to the Oscars by Costa Rica. Director Manuel Fernández shot the film over a period of six years and focused on two men who said they were abused by the priest when they were children.

CROATIA
“Fiume o morte!” Igor Bezinović
A documentary about the World War I occupation of the city of Fiume by Gabriele d’Annunzio could be straightforward and scholarly, but Bezinović gives it a spin in this docudrama heavy on reenactments and man-on-the-street interviews with citizens who don’t remember the would-be dictator. The director has called it “a history lesson but retold in a fun way.”
Subtitled trailer

CZECH REPUBLIC
“I’m Not Everything I Want to Be,” Klara Tasovská
The first documentary ever submitted by the Czech Republic, “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be” tells the story of Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, who began photographing the clients of an underground gay bar in Prague in the mid 1980s but couldn’t publish until 2008. Director Tasovská composed the film from Jarcovjáková’s photos, diaries and voiceover narration.
Subtitled trailer

DENMARK
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” David Borenstein
Another documentary in a year long on them, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” was shot by a Russian teacher, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, to chronicle the state’s attempts to justify the invasion of Ukraine in schools. After passing his footage to director Borenstein, Talankin left Russia. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Subtitled trailer

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
“Pepe,” Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias
Almost certainly the first Oscar-eligible film to be narrated by the ghost of a hippopotamus, “Pepe” is an unclassifiable fantasia based around the musings of a hippo that was taken from Africa to the private zoo of drug lord Pablo Escobar. It has been on the festival circuit since premiering in early 2024 in Berlin, where de Los Santos Arias won the best director award.
Subtitled trailer

ECUADOR
“Chuzalongo,” Diego Ortuño
Folk tales meet modern horrors in this film based on the Andean legend of “El Chuzalongo,” a mysterious monster who assaults women. Bruno Odar plays a priest who investigates the killings of women but must also deal with violence toward indigenous people in the area. “Chuzalongo” was the highest-grossing Ecuadorian film of 2024.
Subtitled trailer

EGYPT
“Happy Birthday,” Sarah Goher
The social hierarchy in Cairo takes center stage in “Happy Birthday,” which stars Doha Ramadan as an 8-year-old maid who is determined to throw a party for the daughter of her employer. The film, Goher’s directorial debut, premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Best International Narrative Feature Award.

ESTONIA
“Rolling Papers,” Meel Paliale
A disaffected 20-year-old clerk in Tallinn begins to change his outlook when he meets a young dreamer in what writer-director-editor-composer Paliale says is “a film about young people who don’t know what to do with their lives.” “Rolling Papers” won the audience award in the International Youth Competition section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Subtitled trailer

FINLAND
“100 Litres of Gold,” Teemu Nikki
The art of brewing the Finnish ale called sahti is at the heart of this black comedy about a pair of sisters who whip up the titular 100 liters for their sister’s wedding, then drink it all and must find a way to quickly replace it. The two leads were originally written as men, but director Nikki changed their genders after seeing actresses Elina Knihtilä and Pirjo Lonka in a play.
Subtitled trailer

FRANCE
“It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
The Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “It Was Just an Accident” is a searing drama in which a former political prisoner in Iran kidnaps a mechanic he believes was the intelligence officer who tortured him in prison years earlier. Panahi, who himself had been imprisoned for directing work critical of the Islamic Republic, made the film secretly with a French production company, which had enough creative input to qualify it for submission by that country. The French selection committee chose the film from a shortlist that also included Richard Linklater’s Godard tribute “Nouvelle Vague” and Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life.” Neon will release the movie in the U.S.
Subtitled trailer

GEORGIA
“Panopticon,” George Sikharulidze
Newcomer Data Chachua plays a conflicted young man whose parents have left him to fend for himself in this coming-of-age story that mixes religion, sexuality, right-wing politics and the concept that we’re all being watched constantly (which gives the film its title). It premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the summer of 2024.
Subtitled trailer

GERMANY
“Sound of Falling,” Mascha Schilinski
Writer-director Schilinski won the Jury Prize in Cannes for the generation-spanning drama set on a farm in the Altmark region of Germany. The film focuses on four young women at intervals over the course of a century, with 1,400 girls auditioning for the four roles during a casting process that lasted for a year.
Trailer (no English subtitles)
Subtitled clip

GREECE
“Arcadia,” Yorgos Zios
Greece’s Oscar submissions often show a taste for the bizarre, but “Arcadia” mixes its fantasy elements into a story of a neurologist and a former physician who are called to identify the victim of a fatal car accident in a remote seaside resort. The film premiered in the Encounters section of the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.
Subtitled trailer

GREENLAND
“Walls—Akinni Inuk,” Sofie Rørdam and Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg

This rare submission from Greenland is a documentary about Ruth Mikaelsen Jerimiassen, who became friends with codirector Skydsbjerg while serving an indefinite prison sentence for attempted murder. Greenland has only entered the Oscar race three times, with the previous submissions coming in 2010 and 2012. It received a special ruling from the Academy to submit films in the international category even though it is an autonomous territory of Denmark rather than an independent country.
Subtitled trailer

HAITI
“Kidnapping Inc.,” Bruno Mourral
Mourral’s directorial debut is a comedic thriller about a pair of hapless gangsters who are tasked with transporting the kidnapped son of a local politician. The film was originally submitted to the Oscars last year but did not qualify.
Subtitled trailer

HONG KONG
“The Last Dance,” Anselm Chan
The highest-grossing domestic film in Hong Kong history, “The Last Dance” follows a wedding planner who decides to explore the meaning of death during the pandemic by taking over a funeral parlor. Dayo Wong stars as the wedding planner and Michael Hui plays a Taoist priest who performs funeral rituals.
Subtitled trailer

HUNGARY
“Orphan,” László Nemes
The first time Nemes directed a feature, the film was 2015’s “Son of Saul,” one of two Hungarian films that has won the international Oscar. His new film, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, focuses on a young boy in post-World War II Hungary and takes place largely around the 1957 uprising against the communist regime; it has its roots in Nemes’ father’s search for his biological father.
“Official” clip (but it’s only 10 seconds long)
Trailer (no subtitles)

ICELAND
“The Love That Remains,” Hlynur Pálmason
Pálmason has been Iceland’s go-to director for Oscar submissions in recent years, with three of the country’s last seven entries and two of the last three, including the shortlisted “Godland” two years ago. “The Love That Remains” is a drama that covers a year in the life of a family after the parents separate. In Cannes, its canine costar, Panda, won the tongue-in-cheek Palm Dog award for the festival’s best canine performance.
Subtitled clip

INDIA
“Homebound,” Neeraj Ghaywan
India has a very mixed track record at the Oscars, with only three nominations and no wins in 58 submissions and a recent history of bypassing such likely nominees as “The Lunchbox,” “RRR” and “All We Imagine as Light” in favor of more typically Indian films. But “Homebound,” a Hindi-language drama about two childhood friends trying to become police officers, showed it could potentially appeal to voters when it was named second runner-up to “No Other Choice” and “Sentimental Value” for the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award for international films. Martin Scorsese signed on as executive producer.
Subtitled trailer

INDONESIA
“Sore: Wife From the Future,” Yandy Laurens
You don’t see too many Oscar entries based on existing web series, but Laurens’ film is one of those, drawn from his 2017 sci-fi romance series. Dion Wiyoko reprises his role as a young man living in Croatia, while Sheila Dara Aisha plays Sore, a woman who says she’s his wife from the future.
Trailer (no English subtitles)

IRAN
“Cause of Death: Unknown,”  Ali Zarnegar
A group of strangers traveling through the desert face a moral dilemma when one of them dies unexpectedly while carrying a lot of money but no identification. The film has been touted for showing “the moral principles of the Iranian people,” but its choice over Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” led to calls for the Iranian government to have less influence on the selection of Oscar entries.  
Subtitled trailer

IRAQ
“The President’s Cake,” Hasan Hadi
Hadi won the Camera d’Or for the best first film at this year’s Cannes for this drama, which stars Baneen Ahmad Nayyef as a 9-year-old girl who is assigned to bake a cake for the president’s birthday. Chris Columbus, Marielle Heller and Eric Roth have signed on as executive producers, while Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the United States.
Subtitled trailer

IRELAND
“Sanatorium,” Gar O’Rourke
Irish director O’Rourke went to Ukraine for this comic documentary about the residents of the Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a former Soviet health center in southern Ukraine that now treats and shelters resilient patients while the war rages outside. The film premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in March.
Subtitled trailer

ISRAEL
“The Sea,” Shai Carmeli-Pollak
Rather than using an AMPAS-approved selection committee to choose its Oscar entry, as most countries do, Israel automatically gives the slot to the winner of its annual Ophir Awards, its version of the Oscars. This year, that process resulted in one of the race’s most controversial submissions: “The Sea,” a drama about a Palestinian boy in the West Bank trying to see the sea for the first time that dominated the Ophirs with six awards. Angry that the country was submitting a film from a Palestinian point of view, Israel’s minister of culture threatened to withdraw government funding for the Ophirs, which he termed a “shameful ceremony that spits on heroic I.D.F. soldiers.”
Subtitled trailer

ITALY
“Familia,” Francesco Constable
One of the lowest-profile Italian submissions in years, “Familia” is a biographical drama based on the memoir of Luigi Celeste, a onetime far-right militant and the son of a violent father. Star Francesco Gheghi won the best actor award in the Orizzonti section of the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered. The film beat out 23 other titles in the running to represent Italy, including some from this year’s Venice festival, among them Gianfranco Rosi’s “Below the Clouds” and Pietro Marcello’s “Duse.”
Subtitled trailer

JAPAN
“Kokuho,” Lee Sang-il
Director Lee hasn’t represented Japan in the Oscar race since “Hula Girls” in 2006, but he’s back after that 19-year absence with “Kokuho,” a drama about the son of a yakuza gangster who is adopted by a kabuki actor when he’s in his teens. It is only the fourth live-action Japanese film to pass 10 billion yen at the box office.
Subtitled trailer

JORDAN
“All That’s Left of You,” Cherien Dabis
Born in Nebraska to parents of Palestinian and Jordanian descent, actor-director Dabis is best known for the 2009 indie feature “Amreeka” and for directing episodes of “Only Murders in the Building,” “Ozark” and “Ramy.” She directs and acts in “All That’s Left of You,” which flashes back to the life of a Palestinian teenager before he’s confronted by Israeli soldiers.
Subtitled clip

KAZAKHSTAN
“Cadet,” Adilkhan Yerzhanov
A military school for teenage boys becomes a place of bullying and even murder in this dark drama from Kazakhstani director Yerzhanov, who also represented the country four years ago with a lighter film, “Yellow Cat.” The film premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2024 and also screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2025.
Subtitled trailer

KYRGYZSTAN
“Black Red Yellow,” Aktan Abdykalykov
Kyrgyzstan has submitted 18 films to the Oscars since 1998, and one-third of those have come from Abdykalykov, though his 2023 entry “This Is What I Remember” turned out to be ineligible. His new film, based on short stories by Topchugul Shaidullaeva, focuses on the relationship between a traditional carpet maker and a horse herder.
Trailer (no English subtitles)

LATVIA
“Dog of God,” Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele
For the second year in a row, Latvia has submitted an animated film to the Oscars international race – which makes sense, considering that last year’s entry, “Flow,” was nominated in the international category and won for Best Animated Feature.  “Dog of God” is a work of adult animation based on the true story of the 17th century man Thiess of Kaltenbrun, who claimed to be a werewolf and was convicted of heresy. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Trailer (no subtitles, but minimal dialogue)

LEBANON
“A Sad and Beautiful World,” Cyril Aris
Second-time director Aris follows a man and woman who were born on the same day in a Lebanese hospital over three stormy decades in this film, which premiered in the independent Giornate degli Autori section of the Venice Film Festival. Aris said he wanted to tell the contemporary history of Lebanon through a love story.
Subtitled clip

LITHUANIA
“Southern Chronicles,” Ignas Miškinis
This coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old boy who is smitten by a middle-class girl had the biggest opening weekend in the history of Lithuania, on its way to becoming the top-grossing Lithuanian film in history. The selection committee lauded its “exceptional vitality, pulsating energy and the hope it radiates.”  
Subtitled trailer

LUXEMBOURG
“Breathing Underwater,” Eric Lamhene
The setting for this drama is a women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence. Director Lamhene and writer-cinematographer Rae Lyn Lee decided to make the film while doing research for a different movie; they toured a shelter and realized the institution was more vibrant and strong than they’d imagined.
Subtitled trailer

MEXICO
“We Shall Not Be Moved,” Pierre Saint-Martin
Another film that has been on the festival circuit since early 2024, “We Shall Not Be Moved” is an occasionally absurdist black comedy about a woman pursuing the soldier who killed her brother during a 1968 student protest in Mexico City. At the Ariel Awards, presented by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the film won awards as Best First Work and for its screenplay, actors Luisa Huertas and José Alberto Patiño.
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MONGOLIA
“Silent City Driver,” Janchivdorj Sengedorj
The lead character of this moody and occasionally surreal drama is a loner who has just been released after serving more than a dozen years in prison, and who finds companionship in a young woman and a Buddhist monk. The film won the Grand Prix as the best film at the Tallin Black Nights Film Festival.
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MONTENEGRO
 “The Tower of Strength,” Nikola Vukčević
A return to that old Oscar standby, the World War II drama, “The Tower of Strength” is centered on a Christian child who escapes after an attack on his village and a Muslim stranger who helps him get away. The selection makes Vukčević the first director to represent Montenegro in the Oscar race more than once.
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MOROCCO
“Calle Málaga,” Maryam Touzani
Touzani and her husband, Nabil Ayouch, have dominated the Moroccan Oscar entries in recent years, directing six of the last nine submissions (plus three more for Ayouch between 1998 and 2013). Touzani’s last entry, 2022’s “The Blue Caftan,” made the shortlist, and “Calle Málaga” takes a seemingly somber subject – an elderly woman being forced out of the apartment she’s lived in in Tangier – and turns it into a touching, charming crowd-pleaser, thanks largely to a vibrant lead performance by legendary Spanish actress Carmen Maura (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”).
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NEPAL
“Anjila,” Sven Bresser
This inspirational sports drama is based on the story of Nepalese soccer star Anjila Tumbapo Subba, who plays herself despite no previous acting experience. The selection led to controversy when the director of another film claimed that the committee choosing Nepal’s submission had conflicts of interest and didn’t follow its usual procedure.
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NETHERLANDS
“Reedland,” Sven Bresser
Debuting in the Critics’ Week sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, “Reedland” is a psychological thriller starring Gerrit Knobbe as a reed cutter who finds the body of a young girl on his land. His growing determination to discover what happened threatens to uncover dark secrets.  
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NORTH MACEDONIA
“The Tale of Silyan,” Tamara Kotevska
The last time Kotevska entered the Oscars international race was with the 2019 documentary “Honeyland,” which became the first film ever nominated in both the international and doc-feature categories. Her follow-up, “The Tale of Silyan,” is another film set in rural North Macedonia; it’s partly an exploration of an old myth about the White storks that are common in the area and partly the story of a farmer whose family leaves the country in search of work after government policies destroy farming profits.
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NORWAY
“Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
One of the most acclaimed of this year’s entries, “Sentimental Value” stars Stellan Skarsgård as an aging director, Renate Reinsve as his estranged daughter and Elle Fanning as a famous American actress starring in his new movie. After its Cannes premiere, the film won the Grand Prix, second only to the Palme d’Or, and signed a U.S. distribution deal with Neon. It marks Trier’s fourth time representing Norway in the race, after “Reprise” in 2006, “Thelma” in 2017 and nominee “The Worst Person in the World” in 2021.
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PALESTINE
“Palestine 36,” Annemarie Jacir
Rather than choose a charged political story, Palestine has gone with a historical drama from Jacir, who has previously directed the Oscar entries “Salt of This Sea,” “When I Saw You” and “Wajib.” Hiam Abbass, Liam Cunningham and Jeremy Irons are among the actors in this story of colonial oppression and rising resistance began to transform the region.
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PANAMA
“Beloved Tropic,” Ana Endara
A dozen years after her luminous performance in the Chilean Oscar entry “Gloria,” Paulina Garcia is back in the race as an upper-class woman suffering from dementia in this drama that premiered in Toronto in 2024. Jenny Navarrette plays her immigrant caregiver.
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PAPUA NEW GUINEA
“Papa Buka,” Bijukumar Damodaran (Dr. Biju)
The first-ever submission from Papua New Guinea is a historical drama about a World War II veteran who helps a pair of historians research the collaboration of Indian, British and Australian forces in that war. Indian director Damodaran, also known as Dr. Biju, oversaw the first Indian-Papua New Guinea film coproduction.
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PARAGUAY
“Under the Flags, the Sun,” Juanjo Pereira
How does a dictatorship use the media to gain and retain power? That’s the question that “Under the Flags, the Sun” sets out to answer by looking at the Paraguayan media archives of the 35-year rule of Alfredo Stroessner, which ended in 1989. The documentary won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival.  
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PERU
“Motherland,” Marco Panatonic
The tug-of-war between a rural life and modernization is at the heart of “Motherland” (formerly “Kinra”), a film about a man from the mountains of southwestern Peru who wants to study engineering in the city of Cusco but doesn’t want to leave his mother and sister. The film premiered at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival back in late 2023, then played other festivals for a year before its theatrical release in Peru in November 2024.
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PHILIPPINES
“Magellan,” Lav Diaz
Lav Diaz has been making epic-length works of so-called “slow cinema” for more than 20 years, which makes the two-hours-and-36-minute running time of his historical drama “Magellan” feel positively brisk. (His last Oscar entry, 2013’s “Norte, the End of History,” was four hours and 10 minutes long, while he’s made seven films that range from 5:39 to 10:24.) “Magellan” stars Gael Garcia Bernal as the Portuguese explorer and will be released in the U.S. by Janus.
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POLAND
“Franz,” Agnieszka Holland
Holland’s films have been chosen to represent Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic at the Oscars, and she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Europa Europa” when Germany opted not to submit it in the international category. Her new film, “Franz,” is an unconventional look at writer Franz Kafka, alternating scenes in which Idan Weiss plays Kafka with looks at the author’s continuing influence.
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PORTUGAL
“Banzo,” Margarida Cardoso
The title of this film comes from the word used to describe a melancholy that affected enslaved people on colonial plantations, a world that Cardoso had explored in her documentaries. She shot this narrative film set in 1907 on the African islands (and former Portuguese colony) of São Tomé and Príncipe, where ruins still exist of the kind of cocoa plantations depicted in the movie.
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ROMANIA
“Traffic,” Teodora Mihai
A group of Romanian immigrants in Belgium pull off a major robbery in this film based on a 2012 museum heist by Romanians in the Netherlands. The film was written by Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian New Wave director who made the Oscar shortlist with “Beyond the Hills” in 2012 and helped spur a change in the category’s rules when his “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” wasn’t nominated in 2007.
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SENEGAL
“Demba,” Mamadou Dia
The unanimous choice of Senegal’s selection committee (from the four films it had to choose from) was this drama about a smalltown mayor facing retirement after three decades in that job. The film focuses on the mayor’s lingering grief over the death of his wife a year earlier, and his relationship with a son who’d been largely estranged.
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SERBIA
“Sun Never Again,” David Jakovljević
Inspired by director Jakovljević’s own childhood, “Sun Never Again” focuses on a young boy who lives in a small Serbian village next to a huge iron ore mine that threatens the family’s existence. Infusing a grim story with magical realism, the director has said he was influenced by the late David Lynch’s recording of Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” from his 2013 album “The Big Dream.”
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SINGAPORE
“Stranger Eyes,” Yeo Siew Hua
The first Singaporean film selected for the main competition at the Venice Film Festival, “Stranger Eyes” is a mystery thriller about a man whose daughter goes missing and who realizes that the most private moments of his family’s daily life are being recorded. Yeo previously represented Singapore in the Oscar race with his 2018 film “A Land Imagined.”

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SLOVAKIA
“Father,” Tereza Nvotova
When a father inadvertently leaves his young daughter in the car rather than dropping her off at kindergarten, his life spirals out of control. The film, which was based on an incident in the life of a friend of cowriter Dušan Budzak, was shot in long, uninterrupted takes – a style, director Nvotova said, that she adopted because she wanted “something immersive, experiential – almost like a video game, but grounded in very different circumstances, ones that draw us deeper into ourselves.”  
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SLOVENIA
“Little Trouble Girls,” Urška Djukić
An introverted 16-year-old girl experiences an awakening at a weekend retreat for the all-girls choir in her Catholic school in the feature debut of Djukić, an award-winning director of short films. “Little Trouble Girls” won the Berlinale Perspectives FIPRESCI Prize and the cinematography award at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year.
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SOUTH AFRICA
“The Heart Is a Muscle,” Imran Humdulay
A childish prank causes a panicked thirtysomething father to lose control and beat up an innocent man in this drama about personal redemption starring South African singer and TV star Keenan Arrison. The film premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
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SOUTH KOREA
“No Other Choice,” Park Chan-wook
Korean director Park wasn’t chosen to represent his country when he made his best known films, including “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden.” But his films have been selected twice in the last four years, first with the shortlisted “Decision to Leave” in 2022 and now with “No Other Choice,” a black comedy in which a laid-off worker goes to extremes to eliminate the competition while looking for a new job. The film is based on the 1997 Donald Westlake novel “The Ax,” though it’s driven by Park’s particular kind of carefully choreographed anarchy and madness.
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SPAIN
“Sirât,” Oliver Laxe
At the beginning of Laxe’s brutally hellish film, a man and his young son cross the Moroccan desert to attend a rave in search of his missing daughter. They don’t find her, but they’re swept into a maelstrom of bad vibes and catastrophic twists that make it pretty easy to answer the question asked by one character: “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” Neon bought the movie after its Cannes premiere and will release it in North American later this year.
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SWEDEN
“Eagles of the Republic,” Tarik Saleh
Egyptian-Swedish director Saleh is fond of using his movies to examine the corruption of power and the slippery moral slope it entails, and that subject landed him on the Oscar shortlist three years ago with “Boy From Heaven.” This film is set in the world of filmmaking, with Fares Fares playing a movie star who revives his career but complicates his life when he agrees to star in a propaganda film about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
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SWITZERLAND
“Late Shift,” Petra Volpe
German actress Leonie Benesch starred in the Oscar-nominated “The Teacher’s Lounge” two years ago and in “September 5” last year, and she’s back this year in the lead role of this drama about an overworked surgical nurse facing an avalanche of complications during an exhausting shift. Director Volpe was last in the Oscar race with her 2017 film “The Divine Order.”
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TAIWAN
“Left-Handed Girl,” Shih-Ching Tsou
In Tsou’s gentle family drama, a mother and her two daughters move into the city and struggle to carve out a new life in the night market where their small restaurant occupies a modest space. The Taiwanese-American director has frequently collaborated with Sean Baker, who was editing this film on nights and weekends during the Oscar campaign that led to his multiple awards for “Anora.” Netflix bought this film out of its Cannes premiere in the Critics’ Week section and plans a November release.
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TAJIKSTAN
“Black Rabbit, White Rabbit,” Shahram Mokri
Mokri’s mystery drama weaves together a number of disparate stories, from a shady gun deal to a film set where the prop gun just might be real. Tajikstan has only submitted films to the Oscars five times, with two of its previous submissions found to be ineligible.  
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THAILAND
“A Useful Ghost,” Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
This is another family drama from Asia, albeit one that slides into black comedy, supernatural moments and the casual surrealism that often animates the best Southeast Asian cinema. The directorial debut of Boonbunchachoke finds the spirit of a dead woman inhabiting a vacuum cleaner, not to scare people but to help out the husband who has been left on his own.
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TUNISIA
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania
Ben Hania’s films have been nominated twice in recent years, once in the international category for her 2020 drama “The Man Who Sold His Skin” and once for last year’s documentary “Four Daughters.” The latter film mixed fictional and nonfictional techniques, and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” does the same: On its soundtrack, it uses the actual recording of a 70-minute phone call that 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab made to Red Crescent emergency volunteers from a car in Gaza where she was trapped with the bodies of family members who had been killed by Israeli soldiers. Actors re-create the panicked scene in the Red Crescent offices, making the film almost unbearably harrowing.
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TURKEY
“One of Those Days When Hemme Dies,” Murat Fıratoğlu
First-time director Fıratoğlu plays a day laborer searching a Turkish town to shoot the boss who didn’t pay him in this film that won the Special Jury Prize in the Orizzonti section at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. Turkey has been submitting films to the Oscars since 1964 but is still looking for its first nomination.
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UKRAINE
“2000 Meters to Andriivka,” Mstyslav Chernov
Two years ago, Chernov won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for his Ukrainian doc “20 Days in Mariupol.” He has reteamed with the Associated Press and Frontline for this film, which followed Ukrainian forces as they recaptured the Russian-occupied city of Andriivka.
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URUGUAY
“Don’t You Let Me Go,” Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge
Chiara Hourcade and Victoria Jorge star in this drama as a grief-stricken woman and her best friend, who has just died. The film won the Nora Ephron Award after its 2024 premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
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VENEZUELA
“Ali Primera,” Daniel Yegres
This biopic of Venezuelan singer Alí Primera was inspired by Primera’s “Song to Remember Me,” using a non-linear structure and casting four different actors to play the singer at different stages of his life.
Trailer (no subtitles)

VIETNAM
“Red Rain,” Đặng Thái Huyền
Vietnam has often submitted action films or quirky comedies to the Oscars, but this year’s submission is a large-scale war film set in and around the Second Battle of Quảng Tri in 1972.  Directed and co-written by Đặng Thái Huyền, the film became the highest-grossing Vietnamese film of all time in its home country.
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The post Oscars International Race 2025: Complete List of Entries So Far appeared first on TheWrap.

The entries with the highest profiles so far include Joachim Trier’s Cannes-winning “Sentimental Value” (Norway), Kleber Mendonca Filho’s “The Secret Agent” (Brazil), Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling” (Germany), Jasmila Zbanic’s “Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny” (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Laszlo Nemes’ “Orphan” (Hungary), the Dardenne brothers’ “Young Mothers” (Belgium), Simon Mesa Soto’s “A Poet” (Colombia), Hiynur Palmason’s “The Love That Remains” (Iceland), Hasan Hadi’s “The President’s Cake” (Iraq), Cherin Dabis’ “All That’s Left of You” (Jordan), Maryam Touzani’s “Calle Malaga” (Morocco), Tamara Kotseva’s “The Tale of Silyan” (North Macedonia), Annemarie Jacir’s “Palestine 36” (Palestine), Lav Diaz’s “Magellan” (Portugal), Agnieszka Holland’s “Franz” (Poland), Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice” (South Korea), Petra Volpe’s “Late Shift” (Switzerland), Shih-Ching Tsou’s “Left Handed Girl” (Taiwan), Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s “A Useful Ghost” (Thailand) and Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia).

Trier, Zbanic, Kotseva, Holland and Ben Hania have made films that have been nominated in the category in the past, while Nemes has won, with 2015’s “Son of Saul.”

France has yet to announce its submission, but its Oscar selection board has narrowed the choice to five films, including Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” and Richard Linklater’s Godard homage “Nouvelle Vague,” either of which would immediately join “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent,” “No Other Choice” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab” as potential frontrunners.

On Monday, the Academy emailed members encouraging them to participate in the first round of voting in the category and announcing that it will hold in-person screenings of the 15 shortlisted finalists in Los Angeles, New York and London.

As the body of voters grew more international and viewing increasingly moved to the Academy’s members-only viewing portal, in-person screenings of all the eligible films had been discontinued. Screenings of the 15 shortlisted films had remained, but the email warned that members must show up if they want those screenings to continue.

The email from Dilcia Barrera, an AMPAS senior VP of member relations, global outreach and awards administration, said, in part, “Over the last few years, these in-person shortlist screenings have experienced low attendance. We encourage all International Feature Film Award voters to join us for these screenings, as we may not be able to continue them if attendance does not improve.” 

This year, Michèle Ohayon and Wanuri Kahiu will serve as the International Feature Film Award Executive Committee Co-Chairs for this Oscar season, marking the first time in the position for either of them. Ohayon is a member of the Documentary Branch whose films include “Colors Straight Up,” “It Was a Wonderful Life” and “Cowboy Del Amor,” while Kahiu is a filmmaker from Kenya who has directed “From a Whisper” and “Rafiki,” among others.

Beginning on Oct. 10, Academy members will be able to opt-in to cast ballots in the initial round of voting, which will narrow the field from the dozens of entries to a 15-film shortlist. By Friday, Oct. 24, those who chose to participate will receive a group assignment and a list of films they must see, which typically numbers 12 or 13.

Also beginning on Oct. 10, submitted films will begin to be placed in a special section on the Academy Screening Room portal, with members required to see all of the films assigned to their group in order for their vote to count. They are also encouraged to see as many films from other groups as they can.

Once the 15-film shortlist is announced on Dec. 16, voting in the nomination round will be open to any Academy member who sees all 15 of the shortlisted films, either in-person or on the viewing portal.

Here is the list of films that have been submitted and announced so far. Inclusion on this list does not mean that the Academy has vetted the film to make sure that it meets AMPAS rules with its release dates and amount of creative input from the submitting country.

Armenia: “My Armenian Phantoms,” Tamara Stepanyan
Austria: “Peacock,” Bernhard Wenger
Azerbaijan: “Taghiyev: Oil,” Zaur Gasimli
Belgium: “Young Mothers,” Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Bosnia and Herezegovina: “Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny,” Jasmila Zbanic
Brazil: “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonca Filho
Bulgaria: “Tarika,” Milko Lazarov
Cambodia: “Tenement,” Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea
Canada: “The Things You Kill,” Alireza Khatami
Chile: “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Diego Cespedes
Colombia: “A Poet,” Simon Mesa Soto
Costa Rica: “The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener,” Juan Manuel Fernandez
Croatia: “Fiume o morte!” Igor Bezinovic
Czech Republic: “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be,” Klara Tasovska
Dominican Republic: “Pepe,” Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias
Ecuador: “Chuzalongo,” Diego Ortuno
Egypt: “Happy Birthday,” Sarah Goher
Estonia: “Rolling Papers,” Meel Paliale
Finland: “100 Litres of Gold,” Teemu Nikki
Georgia: “Panopticon,” George Sikharulidze
Germany: “Sound of Falling,” Mascha Schilinski
Hungary: “Orphan,” Laszlo Nemes
Iceland: “The Love That Remains,” Hiynur Palmason
Indonesia: “Sore: Wife From the Future,” Yandy Laurens
Iran: “Cause of Death: Unknown,” Ali Zarnegar
Iraq: “The President’s Cake,” Hasan Hadi
Ireland: “Sanatorium,” Gar O’Rourke
Israel: “The Sea,” Shai Carmeli-Pollak
Japan: “Kokuho,” Lee Sang-il
Jordan: “All That’s Left of You,” Cherin Dabis
Latvia: “Dog of God,” Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele
Montenegro: “The Tower of Strength,” Nikola Vukcevic
Morocco: “Calle Malaga,” Maryam Touzani
Netherlands: “Reedland,” Sven Bresser
North Macedonia: “The Tale of Silyan,” Tamara Kotseva
Norway: “Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
Palestine: “Palestine 36,” Annemarie Jacir
Panama: “Beloved Tropic,” Ana Endara
Papua New Guinea: “Papa Buka,” Bijukumar Damodaran
Paraguay: “Under the Flags, the Sun,” Juanjo Pereira
Peru: “Motherland,” Marco Panatonic
Philippines: “Magellan,” Lav Diaz
Poland: “Franz,” Agnieszka Holland
Portugal: “Banzo, Margarida Cardoso
Romania: “Traffic,” Teodora Mihai
Slovakia: “Father,” Tereza Nvotova
Slovenia: “Little Trouble Girls,” Urška Djukić
South Korea: “No Other Choice,” Park Chan-wook
Sweden: “Eagles of the Republic,” Tarik Saleh
Switzerland: “Late Shift,” Petra Volpe
Taiwan: “Left-Handed Girl,” Shih-Ching Tsou
Thailand: “A Useful Ghost,” Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Tunisia: “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Kaouther Ben Hania
Turkey: “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies,” Murat Firatoglu
Ukraine: “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” Mstyslav Chernov
Uruguay: “Don’t You Let Me Go,” Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge

The post Oscars International Race Takes Shape as Academy Asks Voters to Save In-Person Screenings appeared first on TheWrap.

This year, it was “The Pitt” sneaking in and winning the last two awards of the night to upset “Severance,” which had gone into the show with 27 nominations, more than double the total of its rival.

The two series had squared off at the beginning of the night, with “Severance” seemingly having the upper hand. “The Pitt” co-star Katherine LaNasa’s win over four different nominees from “The White Lotus” early in the show was the first sign of how strong “The Pitt” was with Emmy voters (though it may also have been a reminder of the perils of vote-splitting), and the enthusiasm in the room for her win was another good sign for the medical drama.

But a few minutes later, “Severance” star Tramell Tillman got an equally rapturous reception. And when Britt Lower followed by beating the heavily favored Kathy Bates (“Matlock”) for Best Actress in a Drama Series, it seemed that “Severance” was on a roll.

But that thorny sci-fi show, the subject of an on-stage joke about how impenetrable it can sometimes be, didn’t win again after those two acting awards. And “The Pitt” may have overcome the big lead “Severance” had in nominations by simply being more emotional and timelier, given its release in early 2025 as the Trump administration was making changes that would imperil healthcare for many people.

“The Pitt” always felt like more of an Emmy show in spite of the statistics that favored “Severance,” and it turned out to be more of an Emmy show.

Its win was part of an Emmy ceremony that felt different than other recent years, when Television Academy voters tended to dump a lot of awards on a few shows. They did that again this year to a degree, particularly in the limited series categories, but in the midst of showering a lot on a little, they also threw in some pretty big changes of pace. Even in the areas where you pretty much knew where you were going to end up – with “The Studio” and “Adolescence” winning the big comedy and limited series awards – you didn’t know exactly how you were going to get there or what detours you were going to take along the way. 

That was a change from the last few Emmy programs, when it wasn’t unusual for all seven awards in a specific area to be divvied up between only two programs. Last year, “Hacks” and “The Bear” were the only comedy series to win on Emmy night; the year before, “Succession” and “The White Lotus” were the only two drama series to be honored.

If recent years have seen voters surgically targeting specific shows and showering them with awards, their spray pattern was much wider this year – and for the most part, it was very satisfying.

When the first five drama awards went to four different shows, with “Slow Horses” scoring a surprise win in the directing category and “Andor” following with a screenwriting victory, it almost seemed as if Emmy voters were actively trying to spread the love, which they seemed to have forgotten to do in the last five to 10 years.

On the comedy side, Jeff Hiller’s win for “Somebody Somewhere” was more of the same, with Harrison Ford or Ike Barinholtz seemingly poised to take that honor over the guy from a show that had been completely shut out by Emmy voters until its final season.  

But that only slightly derailed the victory march of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s “The Studio,” which went into the night having won nine awards at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys ceremonies. Within the first hour of Sunday’s show, the Apple TV+ and Lionsgate series had won two Emmys to tie the record set by “The Bear” last year for the most wins for a comedy show in a single year; 40 minutes later, it won a third to own the record outright.

In many ways, “The Studio” was made for the Emmys. It was funny but also visually bold with its use of long shots; and for people in the business, it was an insider’s delight, with a murderer’s row of luminaries playing themselves: Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Sarah Polley, Olivia Wilde… In a year in which 2023 winner “The Bear” seemed to have lost its mojo with voters, and 2024 winner “Hacks” didn’t have the heat it did when it upset “The Bear” last year, it was a clear favorite, even after “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder finally won the supporting actress award after losing for the show’s first three seasons.

“Adolescence” was, if possible, even more of a lock. Released by Netflix in the same window as Emmy winner “Baby Reindeer” was last year, its story of a teenage boy accused of killing a female classmate was urgent and moving in a way that made it a frontrunner from the start. It won six of the seven limited-series awards handed out on Sunday – everything except Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, a category in which “Adolescence” did not enter anyone, which was won by Cristin Milioti for “The Penguin.”

The fact that Milioti’s co-star, Colin Farrell, lost the best-actor category to Stephen Graham was the ultimate sign of just how dominant “Adolescence” was.

Until “The Pitt” pulled off its eleventh-hour upset, the biggest suspense wasn’t what would win, it was whether host Nate Bargatze would have to donate any of the promised $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, or whether speeches running past 45 seconds would wipe out the entire donation. (And then they did just that with a half hour to go, but there wasn’t even much suspense over whether Bargatze and the Television Academy would step in at the end of the night and make good on the entire $100,000 and then some.)

At first, that gimmick of Bargatze’s actually succeeded in cutting down on acceptance speeches in a way that other awards show’s constant reminders and occasional gimmicks haven’t, though it also hijacked that aspect of the show and robbed some of the speeches of some emotion.

But the final stretch of the show regained some of that heart, mostly because of the popularity of the big winners: first “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” then “Adolescence,” then “The Studio,” then Noah Wyle and “The Pitt.”

That’s a roster of Emmy recipients that was enormously popular inside the Peacock Theatre, and played well on TV, too. And at an Emmys that was notable for being different from recent shows, the flash of deja vu at the very end was a welcome capper to a good night.

The post Emmys Déjà Vu: Another Big, Satisfying Surprise Ends the Awards Show appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s not that “Driver’s Ed” has any ambitions to be another “Green Book.” In keeping with many of this year’s TIFF films, it’s an audience movie, not an awards movie. But it’s a pretty tepid audience movie, a coming-of-age high school comedy populated with characters who’ve been kicking around since before John Hughes: the kid who outsmarts the demanding but hapless principal, the super-smart but social awkward Asian student, the stoner who’s got more on the ball than you realize…

A veteran director isn’t necessarily disqualified from making an effective teen comedy, but “Driver’s Ed” is mildly amusing at best. It’s a good-natured and good-hearted film without much of the edge or hilarity the Farrelly brothers brought to “Dumb and Dumber” or “There’s Something About Mary” – serviceable, but there’s a reason it’s being dropped at the end of the festival, several days after much of the non-Toronto-based audience has gone home.

And it’s not exactly a great next step for Sam Nivola, who had a key role as the youngest son of Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey in “The White Lotus” but went from one of the year’s most provocative TV shows to a film whose provocations don’t go much beyond a few drug jokes, a raucous frat party and a fair amount of profanity in lines that include Molly Shannon’s school principal telling driver’s ed teacher Kumail Nanjiani that he’s good at talking to kids because “you like them a f–k of a lot more than I do.”

Shannon and Nanjiani are two of the most notable adults (and goofiest characters of any age) in the film, but the story focuses on the kids: Nivola as Jeremy, a talented but lovestruck high school senior who can’t seem to grasp that his girlfriend is not quite as committed to their relationship now that she’s off to college; Sophie Telegadis as Evie, a voice of reason and the love interest that Jeremy is too blind to see; Mohana Krishnan as Aparna, the would-be valedictorian who’s petrified that she’s risking her scholarship to M.I.T. by going off in a borrowed driver’s ed car with her classmates; and Aidan Laprete as Yoshi, the class drug dealer who used to be a brain before his mom died. “I’m still smart, by the way,” he tells Aparna at one point, “I just don’t give a f–k about anything.”  

The four are thrown together in a driver’s ed class taught by Nanjiani, a lackadaisical kind of guy who also has both arms in casts and gives a series of different but equally implausible explanations for how he broke them. But Jeremy decides he has to save his relationship by borrowing the school’s car and heading to his girlfriend’s college, and the others go with him because … well, because there wouldn’t be a movie if they didn’t.

It’s a road movie full of, y’know, wacky escapades: accidentally dropping their cell phones in a river, tangling with a guy who robbed a hot dog stand, evading the school security guard who figures catching them will be his ticket back on the police force that kicked him out and eventually crashing a wild fraternity party when they get to the campus.

Meanwhile, Shannon and Nanjiani do their best to provide some energy, but they’re stuck in a classroom getting updates on the phone, which puts a damper on what they can actually do. Plus, Shannon wants to keep the whole thing quiet for fear that a stolen driver’s ed car will look bad on her permanent record. “I’m not letting three dips–ts and the valedictorian f–k me out of tenure,” she declares.

Is it a spoiler to say that that everybody learns and everybody grows? Probably not. It’s also not a surprise, and neither is anything else in this by-the-numbers teen comedy that finds some fresh new faces but doesn’t give them anything very new to do. Nivola creates a pleasantly clueless character while Telegadis makes the strongest impression among the teens, but it’d be nice if the vet in charge of it all had something that could challenge his cast more than this.

The fact that “Driver’s Ed” is an R-rated teen comedy may make it something of an anomaly these days, but it’s a fairly gentle and mostly goofy one that’s essentially spinning its wheels.

The post ‘Driver’s Ed’ Review: Teenage Road Comedy Doesn’t Really Go Anywhere appeared first on TheWrap.

Television Academy voters love to heap a lot of prizes on a few shows, and this year has some strong contenders to be on the receiving end of their largesse. The comedy series “The Studio” has already set a record for the most awards a comedy has received at the Creative Arts Emmys ceremonies, which were held last weekend, and it’s now only two awards shy of tying record for the most comedy-series Emmys in a single year.

The drama series “Severance” also has multiple Creative Arts wins in its remarkable 27 nominations, though it’s not going to reach the “Shōgun” total. And the limited series “Adolescence” should clean up in those categories as well.

“The Studio” and “Adolescence” are likely to coast to the top awards in their categories, while “Severance” is the odds-on favorite to win in drama but may face an unexpectedly strong challenge from a show with far fewer nominations, “The Pitt.”

In other categories on the primetime show, “The Traitors” seems likely to repeat as the top reality competition show, while the recent cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” may well turn it into a first-time Outstanding Talk Series winner.

Here are our best guesses for what will happen on Sunday night. But it’s important to note that Emmy voters almost always throw in a few surprises, and to acknowledge that we’re goingn out on a limb with a few of our choices here. 

Comedy Categories

Outstanding Comedy Series

Predicted winner: “The Studio”

Other nominees: “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “Hacks,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Nobody Wants This,” “Shrinking,” “What We Do in the Shadows”

“Hacks” was a very popular winner last year when it pulled out an upset over the heavily favored “The Bear,” so you can’t completely rule it out. But Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s first-year series “The Studio” absolutely dominated at the Creative Arts Emmys last weekend, and is only two Emmys shy of tying the record for the most awards won by a comedy series in a single year. It doesn’t seem as if it’ll have much trouble continuing its roll and ending up with the record.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: Seth Rogen, “The Studio”

Other nominees: Adam Brody, “Nobody Wants This”; Jason Segel, “Shrinking”; Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”; Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”

After Martin Short scored a surprise win over Jeremy Allen White at the SAG Awards in February, he and “Only Murders in the Building” had some momentum. But that was before “The Studio” premiered in March. Now Seth Rogen seems poised to win a handful of Emmys, including this one, as he returns from the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, where he no doubt got some inspiration for Season 2. (Make fun of those ridiculous standing ovations, Seth!)

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: Jean Smart, “Hacks”

Other nominees: Uzo Aduba, “The Residence”; Kristen Bell, “Nobody Wants This”; Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”; Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”

Jean Smart is in the same position Julia Louis-Dreyfus was in with “Veep”: She’s very good, she’s thoroughly beloved and she always wins. This would be her fourth victory in four seasons in the category, three short of Louis-Dreyfus’ record but still enough to put her in the all-time Top 5. But it’s not crazy to at least entertain the idea that voters might be in the mood to reward canceled shows beyond just “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” – and if that’s the case, keep an eye on two-time Emmy winner Uzo Aduba for “The Residence.”

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: Ike Barinholtz, “The Studio”

Other nominees: Colman Domingo, “The Four Seasons”; Harrison Ford, “Shrinking”; Jeff Hiller, “Somebody Somewhere”; Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”; Michael Urie, “Shrinking”; Bowen Yang, “Saturday Night Live”

If Ike Barinholtz (“The Studio”) can beat Harrison Ford (“Shrinking”) in this category, it’ll be a sign that nothing can stop his show’s pursuit of the record for most comedy-series wins in a single year. If Ford wins, nobody will be surprised and the Emmy ceremony will have a sentimental high point. The thing is, Emmy voters tend not to be on the sentimental side.

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: Catherine O’Hara, “The Studio”

Other nominees: Liza Colon-Zayas, “The Bear”: Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”; Kathryn Hahn, “The Studio”; Janelle James, “Abbott Elementary”; Sheryl Lee Ralph, “Abbott Elementary”; Jessica Williams, “Shrinking”

Hannah Einbinder is overdue to join her costar Jean Smart in the winner’s circle, isn’t she? It seemed that way last year, when she went into the show as the favorite but lost to Liza Colon-Zayas. If there’s another upset in the offing, it might well be to Catherine O’Hara, one of the many scene-stealers in “The Studio” and an Emmy favorite with 10 nominations and wins for acting in “Schitt’s Creek” and writing “SCTV Network 90” more than 40 years ago.

Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: “The Studio” (“The Oner” episode)

Other nominees: “The Bear,” “Hacks,” “Mid-Century Modern,” “The Rehearsal”

This category’s winningest director ever, 84-year-old TV comedy legend James Burrows, is nominated for “Mid-Century Modern,” but he’s a longshot. One of the nominated episodes is designed to look like a single, uninterrupted shot, and it’s all about how hard it is to make a so-called “Oner.” So it’s pretty much an advertisement for itself.

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series

Predicted winner: “The Studio”

Other nominees: “Abbott Elementary,” “Hacks,” “The Rehearsal,” “Somebody Somewhere,” “What We Do in the Shadows”

Option 1: More love for “The Studio.” Option 2: Apart from giving another trophy to Jean Smart, this is the best place for voters to say that they still like “Hacks.” Option 3: The boldest voters unite behind the final season of the heretofore ignored “Somebody Somewhere” or the jaw-dropping conceit of “The Rehearsal.” All of those things really seem to be possible – but betting on Emmy voters to be bold isn’t usually the smartest approach. And the first time a show wins the Best Comedy Series Emmy, it almost always wins for writing as well, which is more good news for “The Studio.”

Drama Categories

Outstanding Drama Series

Predicted winner: “The Pitt”

Other nominees: “Andor,” “The Diplomat,” “The Last of Us,” “Paradise,” “Severance,” “Slow Horses,” “The White Lotus”

Over the past decade or so, only a handful of shows have received 25 nominations or more (“Shogun,” “Game of Thrones,” “Watchmen,” “Succession”), and every one of them has won the top award in their area. So why does it feel as if “Severance” is vulnerable despite its 27 nominations and its field-leading six wins at the Creative Arts ceremonies? Maybe because “The Pitt” came on late in the eligibility period and seemed to seize real momentum heading into voting, particularly with voters who can embrace the old-school (but souped-up) charms of a medical series. Statistics clearly say that “Severance” will win, but this race feels a whole lot closer than stats suggest, so we’re going to predict an upset.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Predicted winner: Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”

Other nominees: Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”; Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”; Pedro Pascal, “The Last of Us”; Adam Scott, “Severance”

Here’s another showdown between “Severance” and “The Pitt,” in this case in the person of Adam Scott and Noah Wyle, respectively. It just might tip off which show is going to win the big award – although in this case, Wyle goes into the show as a slight favorite, 26 years after his last nomination for “ER.”  

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Predicted winner: Kathy Bates, “Matlock”

Other nominees: Sharon Horgan, “Bad Sisters”; Britt Lower, “Severance”; Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”; Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”

Can you win in a category like this if you’re the only nominee from your show? Kathy Bates and Sharon Horgan are their series’ sole representatives at the Emmys, which history suggests will make it difficult for either of them to beat Bella Ramsey for “The Last of Us” or Britt Lower for “Severance.” But history doesn’t know how widely adored Kathy Bates is. 

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Predicted winner: Walton Goggins, “The White Lotus”

Other nominees: Zach Cherry, “Severance”; Jason Isaacs, “The White Lotus”; James Marsden, “Paradise”; Sam Rockwell, “The White Lotus”; Tramell Tillman, “Severance”; John Turturro, “Severance”

With three nominees from “Severance” and another three from “The White Lotus,” the question might be which show does a better job of focusing rather than splitting its support – or those two shows could both split their vote and leave an opening for James Marsden to win for “Paradise.” But it’s more likely that this is between Walton Goggins for “The White Lotus” and Tramell Tillman for “Severance,” although that astounding Sam Rockwell monologue from “Lotus” might give Goggins a run for his money.

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Predicted winner: Carrie Coon, “The White Lotus”

Other nominees: Patricia Arquette, “Severance”; Katherine LaNasa, “The Pitt”; Julianne Nicholson, “Paradise”; Parker Posey, “The White Lotus”; Natasha Rothwell, “The White Lotus”; Aimee Lou Wood, “The White Lotus”

Vote splitting is even more of a threat here, where “The White Lotus” has four of the seven nominees. If voters can’t decide between Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell and Aimee Lou Wood, it could be good news for Katherine LaNasa from “The Pitt” or even Julianne Nicholson, who could add a drama acting Emmy to go with the comedy one she won last weekend for her guest role on “Hacks.” But maybe Coon’s dinner-table speech, a highlight for many “Lotus” watchers, will carry the day.

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series

Predicted winner: “Severance” (“Cold Harbor” episode)

Other nominees: “Andor” (“Who Are You” episode), “The Pitt” (“7:00 A.M.” episode), “The Pitt” (“6:00 P.M.” episode), “Severance” (“Chikhai Bardo” episode), “Slow Horses” (“Hello Goodbye” episode), “The White Lotus” (“Amor Fati” episode)

This could go to a number of shows that feel as if they have a high degree-of-difficulty, including “Andor” and “The Pitt.” But “Severance” doesn’t seem easy, either, and the across-the-board appreciation for that series is apt to include the show’s director, Ben Stiller.

Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series

Predicted winner: “Severance” (“Cold Harbor” episode)

Other nominees: “Andor” (“Welcome to the Rebellion” episode), “The Pitt” (7:00 A.M.” episode), “The Pitt” (“2:00 P.M.” episode), “Slow Horses” (“Hello Goodbye” episode), “The White Lotus” (“Full Moon Party” episode)

Last year, “Slow Horses” scored its upset victory in this category, and this season’s scripts are just as impressive as last season’s were. Or maybe “The White Lotus” mastermind Mike White gets some love for a show that has been a big deal at the Emmys before but seems overshadowed this year. Still, with “The Pitt” splitting its vote between two episodes, it’s hard not to see the edge going to “Severance.”

Limited and Anthology Series Categories

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

Predicted winner: “Adolescence”
Other nominees: “Black Mirror,” “Dying for Sex,” “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” “The Penguin”

Last year, Netflix dropped a British series, “Baby Reindeer,” toward the end of Emmy season; it became a sensation and dominated the limited series categories. This year, the streamer dropped “Adolescence” around the same time, and it became an even bigger sensation. While “The Penguin” had momentum late last year, “Adolescence” seems poised to dominate.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: Colin Farrell, “The Penguin”

Other nominees: Stephen Graham, “Adolescence”; Jake Gyllenhaal, “Presumed Innocent”; Brian Tyree Henry, “Dope Thief”; Cooper Koch, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

“Adolescence” star, co-writer and producer Stephen Graham has a shot at a three-Emmy night if he wins in this category – but he’ll likely have to settle for a pair of Emmys, with Colin Farrell’s transformative performance in “The Penguin” taking this one. Farrell has already won a string of other awards – a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, a Critics Choice Award, you name it – and he remains the favorite.

Outstanding Lead Actess in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”

Other nominees: Cate Blanchett, “Disclaimer”; Meghann Fahy, “Sirens”; Rashida Jones, “Black Mirror”; Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin”

This category seems to be between Cristin Milioti, a co-lead with Farrell in “The Penguin,” and Michelle Williams in “Dying for Sex,” though one should never underestimate Cate Blanchett. Milioti is considered the favorite in most circles, but we’re going with the humanity of Williams’ performance.

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: Owen Cooper, “Adolescence”

Other nominees: Javier Bardem, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”; Bill Camp, “Presumed Innocent”; Rob Delaney, “Dying for Sex”; Peter Sarsgaard, “Presumed Innocent”; Ashley Walters, “Adolescence”

The supporting categories should bring us back to “Adolescence.” Owen Cooper, all of 13 years old when he booked his first professional acting job as a teenage boy who stabs a female classmate to death, is a strong favorite to become the category’s youngest-ever winner.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: Erin Doherty, “Adolescence”

Other nominees: Ruth Negga, “Presumed Innocent”; Deirdre O’Connell, “The Penguin”; Chloe Sevigny, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”; Jenny Slate, “Dying for Sex”; Christine Tremarco, “Adolescence”

Erin Doherty is in only one of the four episodes of “Adolescence” – but her episode, an extended faceoff between a child psychologist and the young killer, is one of 2025’s most riveting hours of television, even though it almost never leaves a single room.

Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: “Adolescence”

Other nominees: “Dying for Sex” (“It’s Not That Serious” episode), “The Penguin” (“Cent’anni” episode), “The Penguin” (“A Great or Little Thing” episode), “Sirens” (“Exile” episode), “Zero Day”

This is not to denigrate the scale of “The Penguin,” but one of the keys to “Adolescence” is the way director Philip Barantini handled episodes that were shot in uninterrupted hour-long takes. (Unlike the oners in “The Studio,” his oners really are oners.) It’s hard to imagine voters not rewarding him for it.

Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

Predicted winner: “Adolescence”

Other nominees: “Black Mirror,” “Dying for Sex,” “The Penguin,” “Say Nothing”

If voters want to spread the love around, which they sometimes do, this could be a spot for “Dying for Sex” or even the Northern Ireland limited series “Say Nothing.” But “Adolescence” might be too much of a juggernaut for that to happen.

Reality, Talk and Variety Categories

Outstanding Reality Competition Program

Predicted winner: “The Traitors”

Other nominees: “The Amazing Race,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” “Survivor,” “Top Chef”

“The Amazing Race” has won in this category 10 times, “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” four times and “Top Chef” once, but who are we kidding? Alan Cumming won his second consecutive Emmy for hosting “The Traitors” last weekend, and the show will win its second consecutive award in this category on Sunday.

Outstanding Talk Series

Predicted winner: “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”

Other nominees: “The Daily Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

After eight nominations without a win, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has its best chance ever to win the Emmy in this category – and it’s all because his show was canceled, of course, making him a cause célèbre among those who think CBS axed the program under pressure from the Trump administration leading up to Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance. (CBS says it was purely a financial decision.) At any rate, when one of your fellow nominees buys a billboard on the Sunset Strip to announce that he’s voting for you (as Jimmy Kimmel did for Colbert), you have to like your chances. One can only assume that Colbert will thank President Trump in his acceptance speech.

Outstanding Scripted Variety Series

Predicted winner: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”

Other nominee: “Saturday Night Live”

The big question: Will “SNL” beat “Last Week Tonight” for the first time because of the celebration that took place around its 50th season? After all, its anniversary special won seven Creative Arts Emmys last weekend. The answer: Probably not. Voters seem to love the anniversary special more than they love Season 50.

Outstanding Variety Special (Live)

Predicted winner: “SNL50: The Anniversary Special”

Other nominees: “Beyonce Bowl,” “The Oscars,” “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” “Super Bowl Halftime Show”

As we said one paragraph ago, voters love the “SNL” 50th anniversary special.

Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series

Predicted winner: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”

Other nominees: “The Daily Show,” “Saturday Night Live”

There are only three nominees in the category this year, a sign of how few variety series still exist – but those three nominees occupy three of the top seven spots on the list of this category’s all-time biggest winners. “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight” have each won nine times, while “Saturday Night Live” has four wins. The difference is that those nine “Last Week Tonight” wins have come in the last nine years in a row, so it’s hard not to think that it’ll extend the streak to 10.

The post Final Emmy Predictions: A Bunch of Strong Favorites and at Least One Sneaky Challenger appeared first on TheWrap.

And then there’s “Dust Bunny,” Bryan Fuller’s fantasy that premiered in the wee hours of Tuesday morning in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival. The film follows a young girl who insists that a monster under her floorboards has eaten several sets of her stepparents, and you can certainly see it as another child’s escape into fantasy because that’s easier to deal with than reality.

But to his credit, Fuller really wants to have his cake and eat it, too – so while you’re welcome to interpret “Dust Bunny” as a troubled child’s fantasy, it’s just too much fun to buy little Aurora’s story and embrace the monstrosity of it all.

Wildly colorful, gloriously spooky and just plain nuts, this is a movie in which the audience will want to take a quote from one of the characters – “The happiest I’ve ever been is believing something impossible” – and adopt it as their new motto.  

Aurora, played by the irresistible Sophie Sloan, is a no-nonsense, delightfully hard-boiled 8-year-old who knows the facts of life: There’s a monster under her floorboards who has eaten her parents more than once; if you want to live, you have to get around the house without touching the floor; and the neighbor down the hall in her impossibly ornate apartment building (think Tim Burton meets Wes Anderson) might be a guy who can hunt down that monster.

That neighbor is played by Mads Mikkelsen, who insists that he doesn’t believe the whole monster story or consider himself an assassin for hire. But he does have a particular set of skills, and he is mixed up with some unsavory characters, not the least of them being Sigourney Weaver’s zestfully evil Laverne. Plus, he seems to feel guilty over the deaths of Aurora’s latest folks. So when she offers him $327.42 – which she acquired, she tells him without an ounce of shame, by robbing the collection plate at church – he takes the job of at least being her protector.

The feature directorial debut of Fuller after a career best known for the TV series “Hannibal,” “Pushing Daisies” and “American Gods,” “Dust Bunny” takes place in a world of magic and evil that lies just beneath the surface of a more mundane reality. On the streets outside, dragon parades seem to morph into real dragons, while inside, through all those rounded, tinted and etched windows, pulling the covers over your head will keep the monsters away but won’t stop the thumps, groans and screams.

Designed as a horror movie for the entire family, the film has its scares, but it’s just too wacky and too much fun to be disturbing. With a bold musical score by Isabella Summers that keeps circling back to the liturgical doom of the “Dies Irae,” it’s macabre but wacky, though it doesn’t shrink from some dark issues and moral dilemmas. When the neighbor asks, “What makes you so tasty, Aurora?” she has a succinct but sad answer: “I’m wicked. It knows I’m wicked. It keeps eating my family because it knows I don’t deserve one.”

And she can’t be argued out of that or any other stance. A wonderfully to-the-point heroine, she responds to the neighbor’s insistence that “monsters aren’t real” with a simple declaration: “Yes, they are. Don’t pretend.”

By the end, nobody can pretend, because the film’s climactic siege involves at least half a dozen bad guys facing off against Aurora, the neighbor, an FBI agent posing as a child services worker and maybe even Aurora’s monster, who turns out to be pretty helpful in a fight.

Does it make sense? Not really. Do you want it to make sense? Hell, no. Is it all just a dream? No way.

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions will release “Dust Bunny” in theaters on Dec. 5.

The post ‘Dust Bunny’ Review: Bryan Fuller’s Family Horror Flick Is Wild, Colorful and Just Plain Nuts appeared first on TheWrap.

Instead, most of the year’s hottest titles chose to premiere at other festivals, leaving TIFF to fall back on something it has always done exceptionally well: showcase crowd-pleasing movies that will entertain audiences even if they don’t impact the culture or shape the face of the upcoming season.

In a way, you could call that a disappointing turn of events for TIFF50, as this year’s signage calls it. One by one, many of what were expected to be the biggest of this year’s awards movies went to different fall festivals for their world premieres: Venice got Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,”  Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” and more, while Telluride grabbed Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Edward Berger’s “The Ballad of a Small Player” and Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”

“Frankenstein,” “Hamnet” and “Ballad of a Small Player” are also playing in Toronto, but they didn’t premiere here, which meant that TIFF lost those bragging rights in a year in which it would have been nice to land a few big fish. But something else emerged over the first few days of the festival, and in a way it speaks to what has always been a strength of a fest whose top award is determined by votes of the audience rather than a jury.

Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” which premiered on Saturday, is emblematic of this strength — Johnson’s first “Knives Out” blew the roof off of TIFF in 2019, and “Glass Onion” did the same when it premiered here in 2022. TIFF has always been a supersized festival with its eye on the non-industry audience. It wants and needs Hollywood to show up – but when filmmakers talk about what they love about Toronto, they typically start with the wildly enthusiastic crowds. And of all the Netflix movies on the festival circuit these days – “Frankenstein,” “Jay Kelly,” “A House of Dynamite,” “Train Dreams,” “Steve” and more – “Wake Up Dead Man” could well end up drawing the biggest audience.

It’s also a richly satisfying crowd-pleaser that fits perfectly in the TIFF sweet spot. And on Saturday, it held court in the Princess of Wales Theatre while the nearby Roy Thomson Hall showcased Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman,” in which the often-dour director turned a tale of a serial robber into a real rom-com of sorts. In between those two venues, meanwhile, the Royal Alexandra Theatre hosted the world premiere of actress-turned-director Maude Apatow’s college comedy “Poetic License.” And later in the evening, Aziz Ansari premiered his “Good Fortune,” which turned out to be much gentler and smarter than you might expect given its potential for broad stoner comedy. (Think of it as “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Ansari and Seth Rogen as dueling George Baileys and Keanu Reeves as a deadpan but very funny angel Clarence.)

You can throw in Jonathan Etzler’s “Bad Apples” (Saoirse Ronan as a teacher who snaps), “Charlie Harper” (a touching post-rom-com) and even Baz Luhrmann’s “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which had ’em dancing in the aisles, and Paul Greengrass’ “The Lost Bus,” a harrowing action film about devastating California wildfires, which seems designed more to capture viewers (who burst into a hefty round of applause at one particularly intense moment) than to impress voters.

And as usual, Toronto is lots more than what plays in its top few theaters on the opening weekend.  There have been plenty of documentaries, from hard-hitting to entertaining, and lots of weightier films that have come here after premiering in Cannes, Venice and Telluride. “Hamnet” arrived in Toronto on Sunday afternoon and “Frankenstein” will be here on Monday, so two of the real faces of awards season are accounted for. And once the People’s Choice Award is announced at the end of the 11-day festival, recent history says that it will go on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; every winner between 2012 and 2023 did just that, though last year’s winner, “The Life of Chuck,” seems likely to break the streak.

In the meantime, we’ve got another week to go in this year’s fest. A slate of audience movies may not be what the TIFF team envisioned for their 50th edition, but it’s certainly an appropriate way to acknowledge that popcorn movies are at least as important as prestige movies at this festival.

The post Toronto Film Festival So Far: Short on Prestige Movies, Big on Popcorn Flicks appeared first on TheWrap.

“He’s a very smart individual, probably genius level,” says the prison guard. “He’s also a complete idiot.”

There you have Jeffrey Manchester, a real-life Army veteran who robbed 40-some McDonald’s restaurants by cutting holes in the roof, was sent to prison for 45 years, escaped, lived undetected in a Toys “R” Us for six months and risked it all by romancing a churchgoing single mother.

His glaring contradictions form the bedrock of Cianfrance’s film, which embraces the duality by playing up the charm and likeability of a rom-com couple whose meet-cute involves a prison break and a bag of stolen toys. Cianfrance’s last few movies — the harrowing relationship story “Blue Valentine,” the multi-generational epic “The Place Beyond the Pines” and the weighty “The Light Between Oceans” — have been predominantly dark. “Roofman” feels lighter, friendlier and funnier.

But as the Paramount Pictures film goes on, its pleasures play out under the shadow of an all-but-inevitable doom; this is a film that feels enjoyable, but only if you can ignore what’s coming for these characters.

Still, there’s a very good reason Channing Tatum was chosen to play Manchester. The film keeps telling us that Jeffrey is a good guy even though he robs McDonald’s in an attempt to provide for the three children he and his estranged wife have. It’s easier to shrug off that string of felonies if the felon is played by the effortlessly charming Tatum, who somehow gets us to believe he’s just a little misguided.

“This is the part of the story where I hope you’re wondering how a nice guy like me got involved in this,” he says in a voiceover in the opening moments of the film, and it’s to his credit that we swallow the “nice guy like me” line. (I mean, hey, he gave the McDonald’s manager his hoodie before locking the guy in the walk-in refrigerator!)

Jeffrey, we’re told by his old Army buddy Steve (Lakeith Stanfield), has the remarkable ability to notice things that other people don’t, which makes him an asset in war zones and also in small towns with restaurants ripe for robbing. And when he’s sent to prison for one of those robberies that goes bad, his skill set also means that he can figure out how to get out.

The problem is that whole genius/idiot thing. Jeffrey wants to stay in the Charlotte area because that’s where his kids are, though he knows to contact them would result in immediate arrest. He stumbles on a Toys “R” Us store and hides there, first in a crawlspace and later in a more luxurious hideaway he fashions behind a wall of bicycles.

All of this plays out with a light touch, and with music by Christopher Bear that manages to be playful and a little sentimental even in the prison scenes. Between the tone of the film and the easygoing appeal of Tatum, “Roofman” gives us little choice but to root for Jeffrey, even when he puts on roller skates and does some questionable Tom Cruise/”Risky Business” moves in the toy store aisles or attacks the Tickle Me Elmo display in a fit of frustration.

And while he doesn’t really mean to start romancing Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst) when he brings a bag of pilfered goods to the toy drive she runs at a local church, he does it so naturally and she responds so eagerly that we kind of have to root for them, too. It helps that Dunst is grounded as always, and under normal circumstances they’d be an ideal rom-com couple.

But these are not normal circumstances. Cianfrance’s movie may play like a rom-com, but the rom and the com are taking place under a giant shadow; no matter how much you want to see these crazy kids succeed, you can’t ignore that settling down to cozy domesticity in the city where law enforcement knows what he looks like and is searching for him is simply not going to happen.

So this is a rom-com with a big but. There’s a hysterical scene where Jeffrey is bathing himself in the toy store restroom when the store manager (Peter Dinklage) shows up unexpectedly and confronts the stark-naked intruder … but that just means he’s probably going to be caught sooner. There’s a fun scene where Jeffrey and Leigh shop for a used car and his wild driving helps mend tensions with Leigh’s teenage daughter … but a photo of the happy family with their new car can only be one more opportunity for someone to spot Jeffrey.

“Roofman” has it both ways; it’s funny and foreboding, sweet and troubling, light on its feet but with an inescapable undertone of uneasiness, even dread. Jeffrey works hard to keep way too many balls in the air — relationships, hiding places, escape plans put together by Steve and his girlfriend Michelle (Juno Temple) — while Leigh puts on a brave face that can’t hide her increasing doubts (something Dunst is exceptionally good at conveying without calling attention to what she’s doing).

The tonal juggling act isn’t always seamless, but in a way, the contradictions are what give “Roofman” its life. It’s a sad movie, really, but it’s also a lot of fun. And if that doesn’t make sense, maybe it’s the whole point.

For TheWrap’s complete TIFF coverage, go here.

The post ‘Roofman’ Review: Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst Are a Charmingly Doomed Couple in Dark Rom-Com appeared first on TheWrap.

The title seems as if it could tell you everything you need to know about the movie, but Luhrmann has grander ambitions than that. The film is an Elvis concert movie of sorts, drawn mostly from footage filmed for a pair of early 1970s documentaries, “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” and “Elvis on Tour.” But it’s far from a straight concert film, because it mixes concert footage with rehearsals, studio sessions, archival materials and voiceovers in which Elvis describes his life in a way that seems more casual and perhaps more honest than most of his public statements.

Luhrmann calls it a “tone poem,” but you can also think of it as a remix along the lines of the nerviest moments from Luhrmann’s last Elvis movie, when a song might start with the familiar Elvis version, performed by Elvis or by star Austin Butler or by a mixture of the two, but also bring in hip-hop elements before it’s done.

“EPiC” is Elvis through the Baz lens, where big and bold is always preferable to straightforward and where going over-the-top is never considered a bad thing. If it’s not revelatory for people who’ve seen the existing films from the era, it’s the most imaginative, generous and entertaining look at a time in which Elvis’ comeback still had real life to it.

It’s also got a great beat and you can dance to it, as the audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre did.

(Of course, Luhrmann may have helped prompt that by his pre-screening comment that he’d be looking for the most enthusiastic audience members and giving them swag.) 

The film is based around shows Elvis did at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in the summer of 1970; it wasn’t his return to live performances, which had happened in the previous year, but a later engagement that was filmed for the movie “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is.” But a few other shows also went into the mix,which means we get to chart a year or two of Elvis by his jumpsuits: the white, studded look of those ’70 first Vegas shows; a light blue number that found Elvis a little paler and puffier, featured in “Elvis on Tour,”; a dark blue suit that fell in between.

And the performance veer between playful and passionate, with Elvis in great voice throughout on the raw rock ‘n’ roll songs from his past and the full-throated ballads to which he would increasingly turn for the remainder of his career. Highlights include the first-ever live performance of “Burning Love,” a tantalizing few moments of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and the arrival of “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as true showstoppers.

“EPiC” is a film that more or less follows an Elvis show but is always on the move in and around that show. Offstage Elvis informs onstage Elvis and vice versa, and the zeal with which Luhrmann whips it all up into an undefinable Elvispalooza is fit for a King.

The post ‘EPiC’ Review: Baz Luhrmann Doesn’t Need Austin Butler to Make Another Rockin’ Elvis Movie appeared first on TheWrap.