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Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Switzerland has selected Michael Koch’s Swiss-German language feature A Piece Of Sky as its candidate for the best international film category of the 2023 Oscars.

Set in a remote mountain village, the drama revolves around the against-the-odds-love story between a local woman and an outsider farmhand, who is struck down by a brain tumor that makes his behaviour angry and impulsive.

The film enjoyed a buzzy world premiere at the Berlinale earlier this year where it was feted with a special mention by the international jury. The feature was warmly received by critics with Deadline’s review describing the work as “both beautifully made and a thing of beauty in itself”.

The feature is produced by Zurich-based production company Hugofilm Features and Germany’s Pandora Film Produktion, with the support of Srf Swiss Radio and Television, Srg Ssr and Arte.

International sales are handled by New Europe Film Sales which...

New Europe Film Sales has announced the first sales for Cannes Un Certain Regard-selected “Godland,” directed by Iceland’s Hlynur Pálmason.

The film was picked up in France by Jour2Fete, and the movie was also acquired by three distributors that worked on Pálmason’s Cannes Critics’ Week title “A White, White Day” – Benelux rights were sold to Imagine, Poland was picked up by New Horizons Association and Australia/New Zealand was picked up by Palace.

The film is set in the late 19th century, when a young Danish priest travels to a remote part of Iceland to build a church and photograph its people. But the deeper he goes into the unforgiving landscape, the more he strays from his purpose, the mission and morality.

The film is produced by Denmark’s Snowglobe in collaboration with Iceland’s Join Motion Pictures, in co-production with France’s Maneki Films, Film I Väst & Garagefilm in Sweden,...

Mubi has unveiled its streaming offerings this April in the U.S. and leading the pack is a special spotlight on Franz Rogowski, star of their recent theatrical release Great Freedom. Selections include Christian Petzold’s Transit as well as a pair of underseen offerings, Luzifer and Aisles.

Also in the lineup are a number of recent releases, including Dominik Graf’s Fabian: Going to the Dogs, Alice Rohrwacher, Francesco Munzi, and Pietro Marcello’s Futura, Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s Freeland, and Sion Sono’s Red Post On Escher Street. Timed with her new documentary Cow, a trio of shorts by Andrea Arnold will also arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

April 1 | Battle Royale | Kinji Fukasaku

April 2 | Mood Indigo | Michel Gondry

April 3 | Army of Shadows | Jean-Pierre Melville

April 4 | Wasp | Andrea Arnold | Three Shorts by Andrea Arnold

April 5 | Tracks | Henry Jaglom | Method in the...

Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian on Wednesday unveiled the full lineup for the fest’s 72nd edition which he is hellbent on holding as an in-person event despite the global spread of the omicron variant, even after other top fests such as Sundance and Rotterdam have thrown in the towel and gone online.

Chatrian spoke to Variety about the selection and what he expects his “exercise in resistance,” as he has called it, to be like on the ground in Berlin.

One thing that I think is clear is that the global film community is supporting your determination.

Yes. Despite everything that is happening, the willingness and desire to be part of the festival on the part of production companies, sellers, actors and directors is very strong. I was even moved a couple of weeks ago when they told me that Paolo Taviani, who is 91, really wants to come at any cost.

The complete lineup for the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, taking place February 10-20, 2022, has been unveiled and it’s a major collection of some of our most-anticipated films of the year. As teased yesterday, Claire Denis’ Fire (which now has the title Avec amour et acharnement (aka Both Sides of the Blade)) will premiere in competition, alongside Hong Sangsoo’s The Novelist’s Film, Carla Simón’s Summer 1993 follow-up Alcarràs, Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini, Rithy Panh’s Everything Will Be Ok, and more.

Elsewhere in the festival is Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, Dario Argento’s Dark Glasses, Andrew Dominik’s Nick Cave & Warren Ellis doc This Much I Know To Be True, Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet, Gastón Solnicki’s A Little Love Package, Quentin Dupieux’s Incredible But True, plus new shorts by Lucrecia Martel, Hlynur Pálmason, and more. Also recently announced was the Panorama section, which will open...

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival (February 10-20) revealed its Competition line-up on Wednesday, scroll down for the full list.

As previously announced, the International Competition opens this year with François Ozon’s Peter Von Kant. Joining the Ozon pic today were 17 further features, including new films from Hong Sang-soo, Claire Denis, Ulrich Seidl, and Rithy Panh.

This marks Denis’ first time in Berlin’s Competition, having been a regular at Cannes over the years, while her last film High Life debuted at Toronto. The director’s new movie Both Sides of the Blade (previously known as Fire) stars Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon.

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo picked up the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2020 for movie The Woman Who Ran. His latest pic is The Novelist’s Film, which Berlin Artistic Director today said celebrates chance encounters.

The Competition program is 17 world premieres plus one international premiere,...

Films by auteurs Claire Denis, Hong Sangsoo and Rithy Panh are part of the lineup in competition at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival.

Berlin’s 2022 selection spans 18 movies, seven directed by women, which will compete for the Golden and Silver Bears. The films originate from 15 countries, with 17 serving as world premieres. Two of the films are first features, both from women.

Artistic director Carlo Chatrian discussed the thematic throughline of “human and emotional bonds” across the selection, with the family unit serving as a key focal point in a number of movies. More than half are set in the present time, and two are within the pandemic era.

The festival hosts 12 returning filmmakers, eight of whom are in competition and five of whom already hold a Bear from Berlin.

The festival will go ahead as an in-person event, albeit with seating capacity in movie theaters reduced to 50% and without any parties or receptions.

While the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival prides itself on showcasing choice European fare to global cinephiles, the last six years has seen the festival build its industry strand into one of the most attractive places in Central Europe to source regional talent. Dubbed Eastern Promises and steered by respected Head of Film Industry Office Hugo Rosák, the popular program promotes promising filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and connects them with distributors, sales agents, producers and festival programmers.

In addition to a busy schedule of workshops and panels, the main goal of the event is to showcase carefully selected projects at various stages of development through its three works in progress programs: Works In Progress; Works In Development – Feature Launch; and First Cut+. Projects all compete for various prizes throughout the event.

“When we started Eastern Promises we always wanted to be a kind of...

The Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled nine winners across its three works in progress programmes.

Karlovy Vary’s Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled nine winners across its three works in progress programmes: Works In Progress; Works in Development – Feature Launch; and First Cut+. The event took place online this year from July 28-August 12.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Among the winners were Victim, from Slovakia, Czech Republic and Germany, directed by Michal Blaško and produced by Jakub Viktorín and Pavla Janoušková Kubečková, which will follow a Ukrainian woman in a small Czech town fighting for justice...

Innovative, diverse and personal stories won the awards of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry program on Monday, taking honors in three sections focused on emerging filmmakers in both narrative and docu genres.

Karlovy Vary industry head Hugo Rosak said the decision by Eastern Promises to allow fiction and non-fiction films to compete alongside each other – a new approach that parallels the fest’s newly reformatted main competition category – is based on the premise that “both categories, despite their differences, possess the same artistic value.”

Jurors from a host of film biz and development organizations gave the Works in Progress Post-Production Development Award, which funds services at Prague’s Upp post house and Soundsquare studio to Iranian-French film “An Owl, a Garden and the Writer,” directed by Sara Dolatabadi, and produced by Dolatabadi, Amir Naderi and Farhad Mohammadi.

The film focuses on the “poetic revelation of one...

The initiative is a good pointer to next year’s festival favourites.

International festival directors, sales agents, distributors and producers tuned in online to the Coming Soon pitch event at the auspicious TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) this week.

Of the eight feature projects, six were unfinished, in post-production or never seen before.

Unusually for Coming Soon and due to unprecedented circumstances of this year, a further two had already played at festivals: El Father Plays Himself (Visions du Réel) and The Salt In Our Water (Busan and London).

Previous Coming Soon selections of recent years have included Massoud Bakhshi’s Yalda...

The initiative is a good pointer to next year’s festival favourites.

International festival directors, sales agents, distributors and producers tuned in online to the Coming Soon pitch event at the auspicious Torino Film Lab this week.

Of the eight feature projects, six were unfinished, in post-production or never seen before. Unusually for Coming Soon and due to unprecedented circumstances of this year, a further two had already played at festivals: El Father Plays Himself ( Visions du Réel) and The Salt in Our Water ( Busan and London).

Previous Coming Soon selections of recent years have included Massoud Bakhshi’s...

Halted on its tenth day of filming, the Swiss director’s second feature film has landed in Locarno thanks to the new Films After Tomorrow initiative. Already well-acquainted with the Locarno Film Festival where he presented his first feature film Marija in 2016 (in the International Competition), the Swiss actor, screenwriter and director Michael Koch is repeating the feat with his second work A Piece of Sky. Despite the unexpected, abrupt end brought to the film shoot by the Covid-19 pandemic, A Piece of Sky has successfully landed at the Locarno Film Festival, where it has been selected as one of twenty projects (ten international and ten Swiss) to take part in the Films After Tomorrow line-up, an initiative devised for this special edition of Locarno 2020 with a view to kickstarting a film industry which is sadly at a standstill. Twenty films which have been halted and blocked as a...

Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales outfit New Europe Film Sales has acquired world sales rights to “A Piece of Sky,” Swiss director Michael Koch’s sophomore feature, which was selected for The Films After Tomorrow strand of the Locarno Festival.

“A Piece of Sky” is based on the real-life story of Anna and Marco, a couple who falls in love in a remote Alpine village. Shortly after their wedding, Marco is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and increasingly loses the ability to control his impulses. But while he grows violent and is even accused of sexually abusing Anna’s daughter, his wife decides to honor his last wish and stay with him until his death.

Koch traveled to the forbidding, mountainous Alpine region while developing the script for the film, befriending villagers and delving deep into the area’s culture and traditions. “I try to be really precise and...

Like most film festivals this year, Locarno Film Festival will not be moving ahead as usual. However, they’ve found inventive ways to both celebrate filmmakers they’ve long admired and present films physically and digitally. After announcing a new initiative to support new films by Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Lav Diaz, Wang Bing, Miguel Gomes, and more, they’ve asked this class of talented directors to select their favorite films in Locarno history.

A Journey in the Festival’s History is devoted to Locarno’s 73-year history of showing the best in international cinema. Made up of twenty films, a selection will screen online for those in Switzerland as well as Mubi internationally. On August 5-15, they will also screen in person at Locarno’s theaters.

Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “It would be an impossible task to present a review of the history...

Films by Roberto Rossellini, Chantel Akerman and Marguerite Duras feature in selection.

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of 20 classic film titles that will be showcased in its A Journey In The Festival’s History sidebar as part of its special hybrid edition running August 5 to 15.

The line-up is part of the festival’s ’Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films’ edition which was created after it was forced to cancel its 73rd edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The titles have been selected by the directors taking part in its festival’s exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative...

High-profile filmmakers including Lucrecia Martel and Lav Diaz have contributed to a retrospective program for the Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15), selecting 20 titles from the event’s 74-year history that will have online and physical screenings next month.

Due to ongoing pandemic disruption Locarno shifted the majority of its festival online this year, though ten of the below list of titles will still have physical screenings in Switzerland. The entire program will be shown online for free in Switzerland by the fest, while it is partnering with streamer Mubi to stream the films outside of the country.

Ranging from 1948 (Locarno’s third edition) to 2018 (its 71st), the titles offer a broad insight into the fest’s history and are directed by filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Whit Stillman. The selectees are all participating in Locarno’s ‘The Films After Tomorrow’ initiative this year,...

Upcoming films from Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Lav Diaz and Miguel Gomes selected for special initiative.

The Locarno Film Festival has announced the line-up of 20 features that it has selected for its exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative.

The special event was created to support feature films that have stalled at various stages of production due to the Covid-19 pandemic which also led to the cancellation of the physical edition of the 73rd edition of Locarno.

Locarno’s artistic director Lili Hinstin said that 545 projects had been submitted to the initiative in a sign of the impact that the pandemic has had on independent filmmaking.

For his sophomore feature, “A Piece of Sky,” director Michael Koch ventured deep into the Swiss Alps to unravel the threads of a remarkable story that had haunted him for years. A tale of love and violent passions, it had seemed almost impossible to accept at face value, until Koch found himself confronted by the power and majesty of nature in the remote, mountainous region. “In this landscape, you feel that there is something bigger that you cannot control,” he said.

Based on real-life events, “A Piece of Sky” is the story of Anna and Marco, a couple who fall in love in a small Alpine village. Shortly after their wedding, Marco is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and increasingly loses the ability to control his impulses. But while he grows violent and is even accused of sexually abusing Anna’s daughter, she decides to honor his last wish...

At a time when the arthouse market is struggling with declining viewers, Germany’s Pandora Film continues to achieve success in both production and distribution with an eclectic lineup of domestic and international films.

The Cologne-based company’s shareholders, producers Claudia Steffen, Christoph Friedel, Reinhard Brundig and Raimond Goebel, attribute their strong performance in part to their close working relationships with filmmakers. Pandora’s recent co-productions include Claire Denis’ upcoming science fiction drama “High Life,” starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, Marcelo Martinessi’s award-winning Paraguayan drama “The Heiresses” and Ulrich Köhler’s German feature “In My Room,” which premieres in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Steffen and Friedel spoke with Variety about the company’s latest productions, the current industry climate and the company’s inner workings.

Where is Pandora Film today, both as a producer-distributor in Germany as well as a key co-production partner for international filmmakers?

Steffen: With...

As the arthouse market is struggling with declining audiences, Germany’s Pandora Film continues to achieve success in both production and distribution with an eclectic lineup.

The Cologne-based company’s shareholders — producers Claudia Steffen, Christoph Friedel, Reinhard Brundig and Raimond Goebel — attribute their strong performance in part to their close working relationships with filmmakers. Pandora’s recent co-productions include Claire Denis’ upcoming science-fiction drama “High Life,” starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche; Marcelo Martinessi’s award-winning Paraguayan drama “The Heiresses”; and Ulrich Koehler’s German feature “In My Room,” which premieres in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Steffen and Friedel spoke with Variety about the company’s latest productions, the current industry climate and the company’s inner workings.

Where is Pandora Film today, both as a producer-distributor in Germany and as a key partner for international filmmakers?

Steffen: With our distribution colleagues we have been reacting to the increasingly difficult German arthouse market.

Tfl announce 20 new projects for 2018 ScriptLab, with a strong focus on genre movies.

The TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) has announced the 20 new projects selected for the 2018 ScriptLab. 50% of this year’s projects have female directors (ten will be directed by women, nine by men, and one co-directed by a man and a woman).

The ScriptLab is a nine-month scriptwriting programme hosted by the TorinoFilmLab, involving a number of feature films at an early stage of development. Composed of two week-long residential workshops, one in Greece (March) and one in France (June), the ScriptLab also feeds in to TorinoFilmLab annual industry event the Tfl Meeting (this year running on the 23-24 November, as usual in parallel to the Torino Film Festival).

“We noticed a new yearning for genre cinema” comments TorinoFilmLabartistic director Matthieu Darras. “Several of these projects either explore the recent past, the 90s or early 2000s, or an imagined near future in various sci-fi survival stories”

With a strong...