Oscars 2027 International Feature Film Submissions

Markus Schleinzer’s black-and-white period drama Rose won star Sandra Hüller the Silver Bear leading performance prize after its world premiere at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival. Set in 17th century Germany, she plays a mysterious soldier who appears in a secluded Protestant village amidst the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War and declares himself to be the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead, eventually gaining the villagers’ acceptance — even as it all is built on lies. Mubi has North American rights to the pic, which Deadline’s critic Damon Wise called “a remarkable piece of work.” Hüller was previously Oscar-nominated for Best Actress for 2014’s Anatomy of a Fall. Read Deadline’s story here.

Gala del Sol’s debut feature Rains Over Babel, which she wrote, directed and produced, had its world premiere in the Next section of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The pic reimagines Dante’s Inferno with a queer twist, set in the mythical, surrealist city of Maya — a retro-futuristic version of Cali, Colombia. The action center son Babel, an iconic dive bar that acts as a purgatory for lost souls presided over by La Flaca (Saray Rebolledo), the city’s Grim Reaper. De Sol, who attended Chapman University’s film school in Orange County, CA, was previously a finalist for the Student Academy Awards in 2018 for her graduate short Transient Passengers. Colombia has been nominated once in the Oscar category, in 2015 for Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent.

Pepa Ljubojacki’s documentary feature If Pigeons Turned to Gold, which world premiered in the Forum section at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival, was shot over a period of five years and followed Ljubojacki’s brother and two cousins as their addictions begin to destroy their relationships and homes. The Czech Film and Television Academy made the selection, saying about the pic: “Using the DIY aesthetics, the director interlinks diary shots, stylized memories, live photos, as well as graphic collages, and without any sentiment tries to understand the reasons for their fall and also the impact of it on the whole family.” The country has won the Oscar category three times, most recently in 1996 with Jan Svěrák’s Kolya, and last made the shortlist in 2024 with Jiří Mádl’s Prague Spring-set Waves. Read Deadline’s story here.

Andrés Farías’ drama Melodrama stars Mercedes Morales and Jimmy Jean-Louis (Heroes) and centers on Sonia, a widow forced to downsize and deal with grief after her husband’s death who meets and falls for Haitian construction worker and poet Aimé. The relationship awakens Sonia’s passions but also reveals the tensions between the Dominican and Haitian communities in the Dominican Republic. The pic had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Film Festival and was selected for the Oscars by the Dominican Republic Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. The country has not yet made it to the nomination stage; it submitted Pepe for last year’s race.

Dua, Blerta Basholli’s period drama, is set in late 1990s Pristina and centers on 13-year-old Dua (Pinea Matoshi) as she struggles to fit into the expectations of womanhood amid the specter of war and rising rising ethnic tensions in the country. The pic, which world premiered in the Critics’ Week section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, is one of two Kosovar pics now eligible for Oscar consideration in the category, after Visar Morina’s Shame and Money won a qualifying award earlier in the year at the Sundance Film Festival.

Viesturs Kairišs’ Ulya, a Latvia, Poland, Estonia and Lithuania co-production, is based on the life of famed Latvian and Soviet Olympic basketball gold medalist Uļjana Semjonova, a 7-footer who played in the 1960 and ’70s and ’80s, winning gold for the USSR in 1976 and 1980. Kārlis Arnolds Avot, a male, plays the role in the pic, which focuses on Ulya’s early life as an awkward, fast-growing country farm girl uncomfortable in her own skin before she is discovered by the basketball world. The film, which Avot also co-wrote, had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. The selection comes after Latvia’s animated pic Flow was nominated in the Oscars’ International Feature category in 2024 and won the Animated Feature statue that year.

Andrius Blaževičius wrote and directed How to Divorce During the War, his third feature, which won the best director prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The family drama centers on Marija (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė), an executive at advertising agency who picks the worst possible time to tell her husband Vytas (Marius Repšys), a film director searching for himself, that she wants a divorce: the day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber have North American rights and released the film August 21 in New York, and August 28 in Los Angeles as part of a national rollout.

Martin Gonda’s Flood (Potopa), his feature debut, is set in 1980s communist Czechoslovakia and is based on real events. It centers on Mara (Sára Chripáková), who dreams of leaving her village for the city where she can study to be a pilot but is forbidden by her father, a widower who wants her to stay and work on the family farm. Generational and political conflict arise when the village faces being wiped out by the construction of the Starina reservoir, which in real life forced the eviction of several rural villages. The pic was selected by the Slovak Film and Television Academy; no Slovakian film has made it to the Oscar shortlist, though the former Czechoslovakia won twice in a span of three years: for The Shop on Main Street in 1965 and Closely Watched Trains in 1967.

Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary Who Is Still Alive (Qui Vit Encore), which world premiered in the Venice Days section at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, explores the loss off home for nine Palestinian refugees against the backdrop of the Gaza War. The interviews were filmed in South Africa, one of the few countries where Palestinians from the Gaza Strip can enter without a visa. The doc, which won the Best Documentary prize at Hot Docs, marks the third project from Wadimoff that deals with Palestine following 2010’s Still Alive in Gaza and 2018’s The Apollo of Gaza. Watermelon Pictures, distributor of last year’s Oscar-nominated pic The Voice of Hind Rajab, is set to release the film theatrically in the U.S. in the fall. Read Deadline’s story here.

A Foggy Tale, directed by Chen Yu-hsun, won four Golden Horse Awards including Best Narrative Feature and was selected to represent Taiwan among seven finalists for “its vivid characters, fluid storytelling grounded in the perspectives of everyday people, and its ability to showcase Taiwanese culture and universal values,” the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan said. Set in 1954 during the country’s White Terror era of government repression, the film centers on 15-year-old Yue (Caitlin Fang), who travels to Taipei to reclaim the body of her executed brother. She escapes being sold by traffickers with the help of a discharged soldier (Will Or), and they join forces to bring her brother home. Taiwan has had three films nominated in the international film category, all directed by Ang Lee: The Wedding Banquet (1993), Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the latter of which won the Oscar.

Tunç Davut’s Like a Limbless Tree centers on retired civil engineer Rafik, who gives his Syrian caregiver money so she can flee to Europe with her two young sons; instead, she leaves the sons with him and disappears. It all happens amid his own family’s issues as they gather for the Eid al-Adha holiday. The pic stars Ali İpin, Feyyaz Duman and Selen Kurtaran. Türkiye has made the International Feature Film shortlist once before, in 2007 for Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys, which also won Ceylan the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.