2025 Oscars: Best International Feature Predictions

Marcus Jones

Mon, February 17, 2025 at 8:45 PM UTC

2 min read

Nominations voting for the 97th Oscars will take place from January 8-12, 2025, with the official nominations announced on January 17, 2025.
Final voting for the Oscars will occur from February 11-18, 2025, leading up to the live telecast of the awards ceremony on Sunday, March 2, 2025, airing on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT.
The film "Emilia Perez" is facing some backlash due to a social media scandal involving one of its stars, but it is still expected to perform well at the Oscars, particularly in the Best International Feature category.

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions .

The State of the Race

Obviously, “Emilia Pérez” has not walked away from the Karla Sofía Gascón social media scandal completely unscathed, but it does seem like any ire voters may have had about the situation has been pinned onto her rather than her breakout film. For instance, at the BAFTA Awards, the film still won Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña as expected. It is pretty likely that an Oscar for Best International Feature will follow, given how the Netflix musical broke the nominations record for a non-English language film.

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That said, the win will not come as easily as previously thought. “I’m Still Here” is the main film that voters are catching up on, and recency bias can be a major factor. This is the first time that there have been two Best International Feature nominees in the Best Picture race as well. Even though it has been a long time since France has won the Best International Feature Oscar, Brazil has not won it at all, and the Walter Salles film is getting more support from the people of its country than we have ever seen before. Star Fernanda Torres, a Best Actress nominee, has been the primary person campaigning for the film, and despite having to make an apology for her own past work, she has been extra charming. “I’m Still Here” has run as good a campaign as any, so this race is very close.

Same goes with Best Animated Feature, where “Flow” has triumphed over major hits like “The Wild Robot” and “Inside Out 2” at the Golden Globes, and several other critics awards. But the voters showing the Sideshow and Janus film support are more likely to focus their energy there than with this category that favors live action.

Rounding things out are “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and “The Girl With the Needle,” two more Cannes competition titles that may have burned bright a little too early in the awards race, but still have plenty of supporters as this was a particularly great year for the category, and it shows with three out of the five nominees mentioned having more than one Academy Award nomination.

Nominees are listed in order of likelihood to win.

“Emilia Pérez” (Jacques Audiard, France)
“I’m Still Here” (Walter Salles, Brazil)
“Flow” (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia)
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany)
“The Girl With the Needle” (Magnus von Horn, Denmark)

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The State of the Race