Deadline Hollywood - Contenders Film: International - 12/06/25
MENEMSHA FILMS
IT’S ALIVE FILMS
AMAZON MGM STUDIOS
Lettering By ALEXIS TAÏEB
The Sea (Israel)
100 Liters of Gold (Finland) Belén (Argentina)
Shai Carmeli-Pollak (Writer/Director)
Baher Agbariya (Producer)
Teemu Nikki (Director/Screenwriter)
Elina Knihtilä (Actor)
Pirjo Lonka (Actor)
Dolores Fonzi (Writer/Director/Actor)
Leticia Cristi (Producer)
COHEN MEDIA GROUP
NEON ALTERED INNOCENCE
THE STAR FILM COMPANY
WATERMELON PICTURES AND VISIBILITY FILMS
TRAMP LTD, MEDUSA FILM, INDIGO FILM & O’GROOVE
Franz (Poland)
No Other Choice (South Korea)
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Chile)
The Heart is a Muscle (South Africa)
All That’s Left of You (Jordan)
Familia (Italy)
SCHEDULE AND SPEAKERS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Agnieszka Holland (Director/Producer)
Park Chan-wook (Writer/Director/Producer)
Diego Céspedes (Director)
Imran Hamdulay (Writer/Director/Producer)
Keenan Arrison (Actor)
Melissa de Vries (Actor)
Cherien Dabis (Writer/Director/Producer/Actor)
Francesco Costabile (Director)
Francesco Gheghi (Actor)
Barbara Ronchi (Actor)
OPEN BORDERS
From Chile to South Korea, world cinema travels freely at Deadline’s annual Contenders Film: International event
By Damon Wise
The Best International Feature Film category is never short on surprises, and 2025 has no shortage of firsts. Of the 86 submissions deemed eligible by AMPAS, several were debut features—including Diego Céspedes’s Chilean title The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingos—and two countries entered the fray for the first time ever: Madagascar and Papua New Guinea. Poised to make history is the Iraqi selection
The President’s Cake, which won two prestigious awards in Cannes (the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award and the Caméra d’Or). If it makes the Oscar shortlist, it will be the first of 14 films that the Middle Eastern country has selected since 2005.
Many of the titles this year will be familiar to those tracking the major film festivals—Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto and San Sebastián all continue to dominate the space—but if you aren’t au fait with the byzantine world of accreditation apartheid and lanyards, Deadline is here to help. Like many of the people in the movies we’ve chosen,
you’re about to go on a journey of discovery, as we speak to the films’ stars, directors, producers and screenwriters to find out what makes their movies so special.
Representing Poland, Agnieszka Holland presents the playful Franz, a biography of the tragically short-lived Czech writer whose surreal bureaucratic nightmares gave rise to the descriptor “Kafkaesque”. From Switzerland comes Late Shift by Petra Volpe, the kinetic, almost real-time study of an overworked nurse dealing with more than she can handle. And Iraq’s Hasan Hadi serves up The President’s Cake, a 1990s-set drama in which a young girl is forced into celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday.
Father, by Tereza Nvotová, features the powerful story of a Slovakian parent who accidentally leaves his infant daughter in the back of his car on a boiling-hot day. Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea represents Israel with its timely story of a young Palestinian boy making his way to the seaside through a largely hostile country. And from Argentina comes the moving political drama Belén, directed by and starring Dolores Fonzi, which highlights a scandal from 2014 that saw an innocent woman wrongly imprisoned for an illegal abortion after suffering a miscarriage.
There’s an unexpectedly poignant tone to CHAN Mou Yin, Anselm’s The Last Dance, an intimate odd-couple story from Hong Kong in which a down-atheel wedding arranger faces pushback when he decides to become a funeral director. Bigger in scope is All That’s Left of You from Jordan, in which Cherien Dabis tells a very personal story spanning three generations of a Palestine family displaced from their homeland in 1948. After that, for a little light relief, South Korea’s Park Chanwook reteams with star Lee Byung Hun for No Other Choice, a murderously funny satire about the effects of downsizing.
In Cape Town, a father
YOU’RE ABOUT TO GO ON A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY, AS WE SPEAK TO THE STARS, DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS AND SCREENWRITERS TO FIND OUT WHAT MAKES THEIR MOVIES SO SPECIAL.
makes a terrible mistake in South African writer-director Imran Hamdulay’s The Heart Is a Muscle, while Urška Djukić Lecamus deals with a teenage girl’s coming of age in the Slovenia drama Little Trouble Girls. True crime and far-right politics merge in Francesco Costabile’s Familia from Italy, and a rare comedy comes from Finland in Teemu Nikki’s 100 Liters of Gold, about two sisters
who accidentally get high on their own supply of homebrew. Finally, we have Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo from Chile, a child’s-eye tale of acceptance and loss set in the early 1980s.
No two films are alike, but they each offer a window on other lives and other cultures, brought together by a shared sense of universality that transcends all known barriers.
MODERATORS MEET THE
The Deadline staffers who will guide you through this year’s Contenders
YOUR HOST
DIANA LODDERHOSE
International Features Editor
● Diana has been working in global film journalism since 2005. Before returning to Deadline in 2021 to focus on features for international film and television, she was previously International Reporter for the site. She is based in London and has frequently covered all the major film festivals and markets including Cannes, Berlin, AFM, Toronto and Sundance. Prior to joining Deadline, Diana was the U.K. correspondent for Variety and also covered film news and box office at Screen International
YOUR MODERATORS
MELANIE GOODFELLOW Senior International Film Correspondent
● Melanie joined Deadline in 2022 as Senior International Film Correspondent. She came from UK trade Screen International, where she spent a decade covering film and TV news out of France, Europe and the Middle East. She has also
worked for Variety and Moving Pictures as well as the U.K. broadsheet The Independent, entertainment magazine Heat and Japan’s The Daily Yomiuri, working out of London, Rome, Brussels, Tokyo and Jerusalem. Melanie originally trained in journalism at Reuters and spent four years there in the mid-1990s as a reporter.
ZAC NTIM
International Reporter
● Zac joined Deadline in 2022 from Insider/Business Insider, where he started as an intern before being promoted to a full reporter. After joining the site’s entertainment team in 2020 he wrote profiles and covered film and TV as well as film festivals. He is currently based in London.
NANCY TARTAGLIONE
International Box Office Editor/Senior Contributor
● Nancy joined Deadline as International Editor in 2011. She covers the global film, television and media business, with a particular focus on international box office and China; as
well as various festivals and awards shows. Based in Europe for more than 25 years, Nancy is the former Editor-inChief of Hollywood Wiretap, and for 10 years was French Correspondent/Contributing Editor at ScreenDaily.com and Screen International. She also has worked for The New York Times as a freelance editor for its DealBook blog. Earlier in her career, Nancy was the European Media Correspondent for Inside. com and co-hosted Canal Plus’ film program “Bazar”. Nancy also spent four years as reporter and editor for Variety in Paris and Los Angeles. Prior to that, she worked in the Paris office of 60 Minutes, and spent two years in the Features department of the International Herald Tribune. She lives in the south of France.
DAMON WISE Film Editor, Awards
● Damon has contributed to Deadline since 2017. As a journalist, his film features, interviews and reviews have been published in publications such as Empire, Total Film, The Guardian, The Times and The Financial Times, and as well as covering set visits and junkets, he is a regular attendee at key international film festivals. In 1998 he published his first book, Come By Sunday (Sidgwick & Jackson), a biography of British film star Diana Dors, and he is currently an advisor to the London Film Festival.
Highlights Newsletter
Through engaging interviews, news updates, and reviews, Deadline’s International team of reporters and editors will provide insights into 2026 BAFTA contenders.
FILMS THE
ALTERED INNOCENCE
● The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo Set in 1982, Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo revolves around 11-year-old Lidia (Tamara Cortés), who has been raised by a transgender family in a remote Chilean mining village. When a deadly disease appears, wild rumors suggest it can be transmitted between two men— through a mere glance—when they fall in love. Matías Catalán, Paula Dinamarca, Claudia Cabezas and Luis Dubó also star.
AMAZON MGM STUDIOS
● Belén
Dolores Fonzi writes, directs and stars in Belén, an Argentinian political drama based on a prominent women’s rights abortion case documented in Ana Correa›s book Somos Belén (We Are
2
Belén). Set in 2014, the film follows a young woman—soon to be known to the public as the pseudonymous “Belén”— who is admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pains, unaware she is pregnant. She wakes up handcuffed to a gurney and surrounded by police, accused of having induced an illegal abortion. After two years in detention, she is sentenced to eight years in prison for aggravated homicide. Director Fonzi plays Soledad Deza, a lawyer from Tucumán who fights a rigged judicial system for her freedom.
COHEN MEDIA GROUP
● Franz Agnieszka Holland’s experimental biopic examines the life of Franz Kafka, author of surreal, paranoid classics such as The Trial and Metamorphosis. Starting with his birth in the 1800s in Prague to his untimely death, aged 40, in post–World War I Vienna, the film stars Idan Weiss, Peter Kurth, Jenovéfa Boková, Ivan Trojan and Sandra Korzeniak.
DANAE PRODUCTION
● Father
Directed by Tereza Nvotová, who co-wrote the screenplay
1 Belén
2 The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
THE FILMS
with Dušan Budzak, Father stars Milan Ondrík as Michal, a stressed Slovakian magazine editor struggling to keep his publication afloat. His life is upended when he accidentally leaves his two-year-old daughter in the car all day during a heatwave. Dominika Morávková, Dominika Zajcz and Martina Sľúková co-star.
EMPEROR MOTION PICTURES
● The Last Dance CHAN Mou Yin, Anselm’s Hong Kong hit sees comedy star Dayo Wong playing a struggling Hong Kong wedding planner named Dominic, who moves into the funeral business in the wake of the pandemic. There, he comes up against Master “Hello” Man, (Michael Hui Koon-man), an antagonistic Taoist priest who officiates at the ceremonies, and makes waves when he tries to modernize the services. Michelle Wai and Chu Pak Hong co-star.
IT’S ALIVE FILMS
● 100 Liters of Gold
This Finnish dark comedy from Teemu Nikki tells the tale of two alcoholic sisters (Elina Knihtilä and Pirjo Lonka) who are famed for their strong homebrew beer. When their other sister
requests 100 liters for her upcoming wedding, the siblings are happy to oblige—but then drink all the booze themselves in a moment of weakness. With monumental hangovers and the wedding day fast approaching, they set off on a mission to procure a new batch.
KINO LORBER
● Little Trouble Girls
This debut feature from Slovenian director Urška Djukić Lecamus follows the sexual awakening of 16-year-old Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan), who joins the all-girls choir at her Catholic School and befriends Ana Maria (Mina Švajger), a popular and flirty third-year student. When the choir travels to a countryside convent for a
weekend of rehearsals, Lucija’s interest in a building worker tests her friendship and disrupts the harmony of the group.
MENEMSHA FILMS
● The Sea
Israeli director Shai CarmeliPollak’s The Sea follows Khaled (Muhammad Gazawi), a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the landlocked West Bank who is on his way to visit the sea for the first time—until Israeli authorities deny him entry at a checkpoint. Determined to fulfil his dream, he sneaks into Israel and embarks on a dangerous journey to the coast, dodging checkpoints, the military and the police.
MUSIC BOX FILMS
● Late Shift
Made in Switzerland, Late Shift, written and directed by Petra Volpe, follows Floria (Leonie Benesch), a dedicated nurse working in an understaffed ER’s surgical ward. As she navigates the tremendous emotional labor and pressure that comes with tending to a critically ill mother, an elderly patient and a wealthy private patient, a grave error brings her to the brink of collapse.
1 Late Shift
2 Little Trouble Girls
3 100 Liters of Gold
4 The Last Dance
5 The Sea
THE FILMS
NEON
● No Other Choice
After celebrating 25 years as a health and safety officer at a paper mill in South Korea, Mansoo (Lee Byung Hun) is brought down to earth when he is made redundant by the company’s new American owners.
Enduring several months of unemployment, Man-soo decides to take a radical new approach to job-seeking: killing the competition. Directed by Park Chan-wook, this satirical black comedy also stars Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min and Yoo Yeon-seok.
SONY PICTURES
CLASSICS
● The President’s Cake
Hasan Hadi’s Cannes Caméra d’Or-winning first feature plays against the backdrop of the 1990s in southern Iraq, while under the regime of President Saddam Hussein and the socio-economic crisis provoked by international sanctions. The plot follows the 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who is tasked with baking a cake for her classmates to celebrate the president’s birthday. Gathering the ingredients in a time of
shortages presents a challenge, but failure to do so can lead to prison—or worse—for her family.
THE STAR FILM COMPANY
● The Heart is a Muscle
Set in Cape Town, Imran Hamdulay’s debut feature explores the bonds between fathers and sons through the lens of inter-generational healing and forgiveness. The story centers on a man named Ryan (Keenan Arrison), who panics when his young son goes missing during his fifth birthday party. After making a terrible mistake, he must learn how to become a better man. Melissa De Vries, Loren Loubser and Dean Marais co-star.
TRAP LTD, MEDUSA FILM, INDIGO FILM & O’GROOVE
● Familia
Based on Luigi Celeste’s memoir, Non Sarà Sempre
Così (It Won’t Always Be Like This), Francesco Costabile’s Familia stars
Francesco Gheghi in a biographical drama that tracks the author’s life as a young far-right militant in Rome, living in the shadow of domestic violence and a criminal father. The cast features, Barbara Ronchi and Francesco Di Leva.
WATERMELON PICTURES / VISIBILITY FILMS
● All That’s Left of You
Written and directed by Cherien Dabis, who also costars, All That’s Left of You is Jordan’s Best International Feature Film submission for the Oscars. Beginning in the West Bank 1988, before flashing back to Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948, the decades-spanning drama takes place over 70 years and examines the roots of the current conflict in the Middle East, as witnessed by three generations of a Palestinian family.
