The Top Contenders of The Best International Feature Film Oscar 2025 from Africa
https://www.linkedin.com/Oscars international feature race 2025 guide: the contenders from Africa and the Middle East
BY BEN DALTON
Two spots on the Oscars shortlist of 15 last year for African and Middle East countries represented a modest improvement on recent years — but entries this year are down. Screen surveys a region that has made halting progress.
Africa
After 11 entries for last year’s award — just one down on the record of 12 from 2021 — African submissions for the 2025 international feature Oscar have dropped to nine. It is now four years since Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin made it all the way to awards night for Tunisia — the only title to do so since 2015. For comparison, over the past nine years, there have been 29 European nominees, 11 from Asia-Pacific and four from the Americas region.
The paucity of African titles at Oscar’s international feature shortlist stage suggests the problem starts early in the process, especially for sub-Saharan Africa. Ben Hania’s Four Daughters for Tunisia and Asmae El Moudir’s The Mother Of All Lies for Morocco both made it to the shortlist of 15 films last time around, but Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan for Morocco was the only African selection for 2023, and there were none for 2022. No Black director has ever won the Academy’s international feature film award.
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Golden tickets
Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey, representing Senegal, offers the best chance of breaking that barrier. The Berlinale Golden Bear winner dramatises the return of 26 royal treasures from France to the Kingdom of Dahomey (in modern-day Benin). Backing from Mubi in territories including North America and UK-Ireland should guarantee it visibility. Two previous Golden Bear winners have gone on to take the international feature Oscar: Vittorio de Sica’s The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis for Italy in 1972, and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation — also the winner of Bafta’s equivalent award — for Iran in 2012. It is French director Diop’s second time representing Senegal, after Atlantics made the shortlist for 2020 but missed out on a nomination.
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