The Best International Feature Film category is never short on surprises, and 2025 has no shortage of firsts. Of the 86 submissions deemed to be eligible by AMPAS, several were debut features — including Diego Céspedes’ Chilean title The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingos — and two countries entering the fray for the first time ever: Madagascar and Papua New Guinea. Poised to make history is the Iraqi selection The President’s Cake, which won two prestigious awards in Cannes (the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award and the Camera d’Or). If it makes the Oscar shortlist, it will be the first of 14 films that the Middle Eastern country has selected since 2005.
A total of 14 submissions will take part in today’s Contenders Film: International, Deadline’s annual virtual panel showcase, which begins at 9 a.m. PT.
Many of the titles in display this year will be familiar to those tracking the major film festivals — Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and San Sebastián all continue to dominate the space — but if you aren’t au fait with the byzantine world of accreditation apartheid and lanyards, Deadline is here to help. Like many of the people in the movies we’ve chosen, you’re about to go on a journey of discovery, as we speak to the films’ stars, directors, producers and screenwriters to find out what makes their movies so special.
Representing Poland, Agnieszka Holland presents the playful Franz, a biography of the tragically short-lived Czech writer whose surreal bureaucratic nightmares gave rise to the descriptor “Kafka-esque.” From Switzerland comes Late Shift by Petra Volpe, the kinetic, almost real-time study of an overworked nurse dealing with more than she can handle. And Iraq’s Hasan Hadi serves up President’s Cake, a 1990s-set drama in which a young girl is forced into celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday.
Father, by Tereza Nvotová, features the powerful story of a Slovakian parent who accidentally leaves his infant daughter in the back of his car on a boiling-hot day. Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea represents Israel with its timely story of a young Palestinian boy making his way to the seaside through a largely hostile country. And from Argentina comes the moving political drama Belén, directed by and starring Dolores Fonzi, which highlights a scandal from 2014 that saw an innocent woman wrongly imprisoned for murder after suffering a miscarriage.
There’s an unexpectedly poignant tone to Anselm Chan’s The Last Dance, an intimate odd-couple story from Hong Kong in which a down-at-heel wedding arranger faces pushback when he decides to become a funeral director. Bigger in scope is All That’s Left of You from Jordan, in which Cherien Dabis tells a very personal story spanning three generations of a Palestine family displaced from their homeland in 1948. After that, for a little light relief, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook reteams with star Lee Byung-hun for No Other Choice, a murderously funny satire about the effects of downsizing.
Click here to read Deadline’s Contenders International preview magazine
In Cape Town, a father makes a terrible mistake in South African writer-director Imran Hamdulay’s The Heart Is a Muscle, while Urška Djukić deals with a teenage girl’s coming of age in the Slovenia drama Little Trouble Girls. True crime and far-right politics merge in Francesco Costabile’s Familia from Italy, and a rare comedy comes from Finland in Teemu Nikki’s 100 Liters of Gold, about two sisters who accidentally get high on their own supply of homebrew. Finally, we have Céspedes’ Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo from Chile, a child’s-eye tale of acceptance and loss set in the early 1980s.
Follow along with Contenders all day on Deadline.com and on our social channels via #DeadlineContenders. Check back Monday when we launch the event’s streaming site featuring all the panel videos.
Below is a rundown of today’s schedule and panelists:
Contenders Film: International
(order subject to change)
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
The President’s Cake (Iraq)
Hasan Hadi (Writer/Director)
MUSIC BOX FILMS
Late Shift (Switzerland)
Petra Volpe (Writer/Director)
Leonie Benesch (Actor)
DANAE PRODUCTION
Father (Slovakia)
Tereza Nvotová (Writer/Director)
Veronika Paštéková (Producer)
KINO LORBER
Little Trouble Girls (Slovenia)
Urška Djukić Lecamus (Writer/Director)
Jara Sofija Ostan (Actor)
Lev Predan Kowarski (Director of Photography)
EMPEROR MOTION PICTURES
The Last Dance (Hong Kong)
Anselm Chan (Director)
MENEMSHA FILMS
The Sea (Israel)
Shai Carmeli-Pollak (Writer/Director)
Baher Agbariya (Producer)
IT’S ALIVE FILMS
100 Liters of Gold (Finland)
Teemu Nikki (Director/Screenwriter)
Elina Knihtilä (Actor)
Pirjo Lonka (Actor)
AMAZON MGM STUDIOS
Belén (Argentina)
Dolores Fonzi (Writer/Director/Actor)
Leticia Cristi (Producer)
COHEN MEDIA GROUP
Franz (Poland)
Agnieszka Holland (Director/Producer)
NEON
No Other Choice (South Korea)
Park Chan-wook (Writer/Director/Producer)
ALTERED INNOCENCE
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Chile)
Diego Cespedes (Director)
THE STAR FILM COMPANY
The Heart is a Muscle (South Africa)
Imran Hamdulay (Writer/Director/Producer)
Keenan Arrison (Actor)
Melissa de Vries (Actor)
WATERMELON PICTURES and VISIBILITY FILMS
All That’s Left of You (Jordan)
Cherien Dabis (Writer/Director/Producer/Actor)
TRAMP LTD, MEDUSA FILM, INDIGO FILM & O’GROOVE
Familia (Italy)
Francesco Costabile (Director)
Francesco Gheghi (Actor)
Barbara Ronchi (Actor)