Croatia has chosen Hana Jušić’s God Will Not Help as its submission for the Best International Feature Film category in the 99th Academy Awards.
It is Jušić’s second solo feature film after multi-award-winning 2016 debut Quit Staring at My Plate, with her other films including the collective work Transmania and short films Terrarium (Terarij) and No Wolf Has A House.
God Will Not Help revolves around a traditional mountain community sent into turmoil when a mysterious foreign woman arrives claiming to be the wife of a man who left them many years ago.
The film world premiered the main competition of the Locarno Film Festival in 2025, where it won the Best Performance Award for Manuela Martelli and Ana Marija Veselčić.
It went on to become a festival hit, playing in more than 40 competitions and winning 12 prizes, including in Sarajevo and Thessaloniki.
By chance, actress-director Martelli is also in the Best International Feature Film race as the director of The Meltdown which has been submitted to the category for Chile.
God Will Not Help was produced by Ankica Juric-Tilic for Kinorama and co-produced by Ines Vasiljević and Stefano Sardo for Nightswim (Italy), Ada Solomon and Diana Caravia for MicroFILM (Romania), Yorgos Tsourgiannis for Horsefly Films (Greece), Didar Domehri for Maneki Films (France), Aleš Pavlin and Andrej Štritof for Perfo Productions (Slovenia) and ERT S.A. (Greece).
It has been supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Eurimages, Italian Ministry of Culture (MIC), Romanian Film Center CNC, Hellenic Film & Audiovisual Center – Cretive Greece – Co-production Window, European Union – NextGenerationEU, ERT S.A., Filming in Croatia, Aide aux cinemas du monde – Centre national du cinema et de l’image animee – Institut francais, Slovenian Film Centre, Viba film, HRT. New Europe Film Sales is handling world sales.
Croatia has submitted regularly to the Oscars since 1991 but never made it to the shortlist stage.
