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And the 2025 Oscar for best international film doesn’t go to … protesters or dissidents

When entries for the best international film Oscar are selected by government bodies, politics often rears its ugly head

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Sandra Hüller in a still from The Zone of Interest, a German-language British film about Auschwitz, and last year’s winner of the Academy Award for the best international film. Photo: A24

For many filmmakers, the Oscars are a pipe dream. But not because they think their films are not good enough.

The exiled Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, for instance, knew his native country was more likely to imprison him than submit his film for the Academy Awards.

Iran, like some other countries including Russia, has an official government body that selects its Oscar submission.

For a filmmaker like Rasoulof, who has brazenly tested his country’s censorship restrictions, that made the Oscars out of the question.
Mohammad Rasoulof, director of German best international film entry The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which he shot in Iran before fleeing into exile, says he feels ripped of his Iranian national identity. Photo: AP
Mohammad Rasoulof, director of German best international film entry The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which he shot in Iran before fleeing into exile, says he feels ripped of his Iranian national identity. Photo: AP

“A lot of independent filmmakers in Iran think that we would never be able to make it to the Oscars,” Rasoulof said in an interview through an interpreter. “The Oscars were never part of my imagination because I was always at war with the Iranian government.”

Unlike other categories at the Academy Awards, the initial selection for the best international film category is outsourced. Individual countries make their submission, one film per country.

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