Foremost Film’s 2025 Oscars Best International Feature Nominees, Ranked
Sony Pictures Classics
The race to the 97th Academy Awards, which takes place this Sunday, March 2, has been far from dull, to say the least.
Unlike some years—– á la Oppenheimer’s comprehensive sweep on the way to the Best Picture win last year –– many turns of the tide have impacted the 2024-2025 awards season, from social media scandal to controversy over the usage of AI technology in the films nominated by Academy voters. This dissension has allowed for some unexpected contenders to rise to the top of the pack (The Substance, I’m Still Here) while others have been virtually knocked out of contention (Emilia Pérez), creating a renewed sense of energy around the Academy Awards, which has struggled with increasingly disinterested public audiences over recent years, particularly since the pandemic.
While the Foremost Film team has long since given up on Academy members actually voting for the best movies of the year to champion on “Hollywood’s Biggest Night,” we still tune in to the Oscars every year to root for the meager number of our favorites included in the final nominations. In part due to the diversity of its international voting body, the Best International Feature category consistently rewards exciting new works of world cinema despite the Academy’s frustrating, outdated restrictions involved with choosing the final five nominees. While the category is not typically one of the flashiest segments of the Oscars broadcast, it still holds value in opening the masses to international titles they possibly would have never come across in mainstream pop culture. This year’s contenders (with one exception) reflect the respectable tastes of the voters for Best International Feature: Emilia Pérez (France), Flow (Latvia), I’m Still Here (Brazil), The Girl with the Needle (Denmark), and The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany). Continue reading to find out how Foremost Film ranks all of this year’s Best International Feature nominees at the upcoming 97th Academy Awards (ranked from worst to best):
5. ‘Emilia Pérez’
Dir. Jacques Audiard
France
Netflix
As soon as Emilia Pérez premiered at Cannes last spring to rave reviews (with its female-led cast jointly sharing the festival’s prize for Best Actress), Foremost Film was dying to see the film. Finally catching up with it on the fall festival circuit, we were left hugely disappointed, even scratching our heads to understand why this movie garnered such rapturous praise.
Emilia Pérez takes huge swings that majorly miss, almost on every front. Audiard absolutely travels into an unknown territory of his filmmaking style, but it feels like he throws everything at the wall just to see what will stick. Zoe Saldañaand Karla Sofía Gascón impress in the lead roles, but all of the musical numbers are totally bizarre, growing more grating and amorphous as the film moves forward. The biggest problem with the film is its narrative, which feels so unfocused after the first hour and violently punishes its unredeemed female characters by the finale. Shortly after receiving the most Oscar nominations of any film this year –– thirteen, including Best Picture –– the backlash around Emilia Pérez finally broke through with a mighty force. Firstly, Audiard was clocked for his uninformed, tone-deaf approach to capturing a specifically Mexican story, then Gascón was outed for racist social media rants that the film’s distributor, Netflix, never managed to catch onto. Outside of the scandal, which has likely wrecked all of Emilia Pérez’s Oscar chances (excluding Saldaña for Best Supporting Actress and possibly El Mal for Best Original Song), the film is ultimately just bad, lousy even. Watch Emilia Pérez on Netflix.
4. ‘The Girl with the Needle’
Dir. Magnus von Horn
Denmark
MUBI
Loosely inspired by the real-life crimes of Dagmar Overby circa World War I, The Girl with the Needle is a formal feat, if not an incredibly unsettling creation. Shot in black and white by Michael Dymek (shout out to his work on 2022’s EO), von Horn’s vision never falls victim to constructing lush period images, instead configuring early 20th century Copenhagen into a sludgy, windswept hellscape where women’s lives are regarded as frivolity and war heroes are transformed into circus freaks. Unrelentless in its freezing-cold depictions of the disenfranchisement of working-class women, The Girl with the Needle only finds respite when its female characters can lean on one another, even if it leads them into violent and uninvited conundrums.
The Girl with the Needle is uncompromising in its portraiture of humanity’s woes during the interwar period in Europe. Von Horn’s intricate recreation of the era is exceptionally compelling, as are the performances and material at the heart of his latest work. The darkness of the director’s exploration undoubtedly limits its mileage with commercial markets and mass audiences, making it a real shocker when the film was announced as one of the five final nominees for Best International Picture this year. Still, arthouse fans should absolutely make it a priority to experience Von Horn’s unflinching statement. Watch The Girl with the Needle on MUBI.
Read Foremost Film’s full review of ‘The Girl with the Needle.’
3. ‘Flow’
Dir. Gints Zilbalodis
Latvia
Sideshow and Janus Films
Flow is a knockout. Awe-inspiring from the first shot to the last. Just the second feature from Zilbalodis, Flow took the Latvian filmmaker nearly six years to complete, and the elaborate, ambitious final product shows us exactly why. Simple but effective in its storytelling, Flow follows a black cat, capybara, heron-like bird, dog, and lemur––an unlikely company–– who seek shelter together on a decrepit sailboat when waters begin to rise and flood their world. The film presents an ambiguous fable that can be explored from many angles: an eco-parable, a meditation on the connection between living creatures. Stunning imagery combines with the film’s peculiar animation and dynamic score to create a true stunner, an unforgettable cinematic experience.
Flow has already proven itself as a fan favorite this awards season: Along with an additional Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, the absolute heartwarmer has become the first Latvian movie to ever receive an Oscar nomination, and U.S. distributor Sideshow/Janus Films’ most prosperous theatrical release to-date. With all of this praise mentioned (Foremost Film ranked Flow as number two on our top ten movies of 2024), the film’s sentimental universality and absence of dialogue make it a bit of an outlier for an Oscar category that should be advocating for the culture and history of a foreign country, meaning that we will ultimately have to back another nominee that better aligns with this notion.
2. ‘I’m Still Here’
Dir. Walter Salles
Brazil
Salles’ latest is, in many ways, an old-school Oscar pick: brilliantly acted, handsomely made, and deeply connected to the historical period it captures. Based on the memoir of the same name from Brazilian author Marcelo Paiva, I’m Still Here takes place during the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s, which ultimately transformed Paiva’s life forever when his left-leaning father was “disappeared” by the increasingly conservative authoritarian government. In the role of the family matriarch –– the core of the movie –– is Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva, who leads her family with a soft heart and fierce determination when the void left by her husband spurs her to push back against injustice.
I’m Still Here premiered to nearly universal praise at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, where it won Best Screenplay. But the movie’s influence remained somewhat muted until the Golden Globes in early January when Torres surprised by taking home the win for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture—Drama. I’m Still Here further shocked when Oscar nominations were announced, scoring three, including Best International Feature, Best Actress for Torres, and Best Picture, the first Brazilian entry to achieve the latter. The passion around this film clearly showcases the large contingency of the Latin American voting body in the Academy as it takes initiatives to diversify over the years, along with the widespread appreciation for such a well-constructed film. I’m Still Here has undoubtedly benefited from the hasty repudiation of Emilia Pérez and will likely be the big winner for Best International Feature this coming Sunday.
‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’
Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
Germany
Neon
From its first moments, you can sense the crucial urgency with which The Seed of the Sacred Fig was created, a work assembled in secrecy by a filmmaker whose future was entirely uncertain. Since its last-minute addition to the 2024 Cannes Competition line-up, Rasoulof’s harrowing exodus from his home country of Iran after facing protracted criminal trials over the years has been notably at the forefront of the film’s public impression, showcasing the director’s unjust treatment in the hands of the government and further stressing the persecution of artistic and critical voices by the theocratic regime.
The film begins as a domestic drama, confined mainly within a Tehran apartment where a lawyer named Iman lives with his wife, Najmeh, and two adolescent daughters, Rezvan and Sana. When Iman is promoted to a judge within the Islamic Revolutionary Court, he faces pressure from above to convict individuals of crimes without fair investigations, eventually appalling his household when they figure out their father’s unethical deeds. As the Woman, Life, Freedom protests ratchet up on the streets below their apartment, Iman’s increasing authoritarianism over his household gradually splinters the entire clan, leaving the women vulnerable to his rising paranoia.
As it moves through its lengthy runtime, The Seed of the Sacred Fig never ceases to swell in scope and purpose, transforming from a film of hushed whispers into a work of guttural screams of total despair. Rasoulof’s commitment to the movie and its condemnation of the forces tearing Iran apart platforms the potent political qualities that cinema can convey, the statements that can be made when using the medium as a critical mechanism instead of just a form of entertainment. Submitted by Germany (where the movie’s co-producers are based), The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s electric connection to the contemporary demands to be experienced, making it the most powerful and (in our eyes) most worthy winner of this year’s Oscar for Best International Feature.