2024 Oscars: Best International Feature Film Predictions

With final voting complete, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.

The State of the Race

Most contenders in the race for the Best International Feature Film Oscar broke out of film festivals. Of last year’s Oscar nominees, “The Quiet Girl” debuted in Berlin; “Close” and “EO” won prizes at Cannes, including the shared Grand Prix and Jury Prize, respectively; “Argentina 1985” premiered in Venice; and the eventual winner, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” debuted at Toronto.

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Since the award was created in 1956, the Academy invites each country’s film industry to submit their selection for what is now called Best International Feature Film. The movie must contain primarily non-English dialogue, which may explain why France did not select Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” (Neon), the Palme d’Or winner starring Sandra Hüller, much of which is in English as well as French. They probably should have: the French submission “The Taste of Things” didn’t make it.

Sharing the Cannes runner-up Grand Jury Prize was British director Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust film “The Zone of Interest” (A24), also starring Hüller, which was submitted by the UK and scored five Oscar nominations. The Best Film in a Foreign Language BAFTA-winner is favored to win.

“The Teacher’s Lounge” (Sony Pictures Classics) debuted in Berlin and swept the German Film Awards, beating out Cannes Best Actor winner Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” (Neon) as the German entry. But then Japan selected “Perfect Days,” despite its German director, as its Oscar contender.

Also playing the fall festivals is the Spanish submission, J.A. Bayona’s airplane crash survival saga “Society of the Snow” (Netflix), which premiered at Venice. Matteo Garrone’s immigration drama “Io Capitano” (Italy) took home the Silver Lion in Venice, as well as a Best New Actor prize for Seydou Sarr.

Contenders for the final five nominations are listed in order of their likelihood to win.

“The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer, United Kingdom)
“Society of the Snow” (J.A. Bayona, Spain)
“The Teachers’ Lounge” (İlker Çatak, Germany)
“Perfect Days” (Wim Wenders, Japan)
“Io Capitano” (Matteo Garrone, Italy)

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