The Spanish Cinema Academy, which last year sent ‘Second Prize’, will announce the final candidate on September 17
‘Sirât’ trailer
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Sirât, by Oliver Laxe; Pilgrimage, of Carla Simón, and Sorda, From Eva Libertad, they are the three films preselected by the Spanish Film Academy for the Oscar race for Best International Film.
After reading this morning at the headquarters of the Academy by actors Juan Diego Botto and Emma Suárez, the members of the Spanish institution will vote again until September 15, and on Wednesday 17 the title that will definitely represent Spain will be announced in the 98th Oscar Awards.
The films that participate in this category of the Hollywood awards have had to be released in their country’s rooms from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2025 (in Spain it has been chosen among the 57 that were presented). The registration date closes at the Hollywood Academy on October 1. The first screen, the call shortlist With 15 titles, it will be announced on December 15, 2025; The nominations will arrive on January 22, 2026, and the 98th Oscar Awards ceremony will be held on March 15. In the last edition the Spanish candidate was Second prize, From Isaki Lacuesta and Pol López, who did not pass the first cut. That statuette was won by the Brazilian I’m still here, by Walter Salles.
Sirât. Oliver Laxe’s last film, which won the jury award last May at the Cannes Festival, is the favorite in the pools among the voters of the Academy to represent Spain in the Oscars. In the French contest competition, the Spanish filmmaker hit a father’s drama (Sergi López) who, accompanied by his little son, seeks in the universe of the raves to his daughter twenty. Next to a handful of Raveros That misplaced and common man crosses Moroccan mountains and the Sahara desert in a tribute to both adventure films and seventy cinema. And the large weight of production has fallen to Movistar and the desire, the company of the Almodóvar brothers. At its festive premiere, the director explained: “I wanted to make a film that stirred the viewer, to remove it, scratch inside. Invite the viewer to a trip that was also physical, with his adventures, entertaining. That he had his show. Like those films that we like from the American cinema of the seventies. It was a cinema created at a time very similar to the current world, in a world Wars and dictatorships. ”
In the United States, Sirât will be distributed by a powerful company, Neon, who have achieved Hollywood statuettes with Parasites y Anora. In the Spanish Academy, its producers Esther García, Agustín Almodóvar and Guillermo Farré, explained that first we have to wait for the selection of the 17th. “And then a lot of peak and shovel will have to be done,” said García, Donostia award of the next San Sebastián contest. By video call, from Paris, Laxe confessed his “joy.” And considered that the affection of the American press received from Cannes will be in his favor. Almodóvar stressed the importance as a “prescriber” of the French festival: “The prize received there is fundamental, and watching the list of the other films already presented to this race is highlighted, because many come from that contest, its importance.”
‘Pilgrimage’ trailer
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Pilgrimage. The second Spanish film present in the competition of the past Cannes has also entered the race to the Oscars. Carla Simón closes with Pilgrimage, That it opens commercially in two days, next Friday, its family inquiry. Its first three feature films, to which the short Letter to my mother for my son (2022), are an intimate and fictional trip to their own existence. Yes in Summer 1993 He showed a seven -year -old girl who was orphaned and was going to live with her uncles (like Simon), and in Alcarràs He counted what the decline of fruit and vegetable agriculture in the Segrià region was (way of life to which his maternal family has dedicated himself), now in Pilgrimage It is time to turn to their parent, from Galician roots, and delve into the months that their parents lived in Vigo, in the middle of the explosion of addiction and death that formed heroine and AIDS. The protagonist is not Carla Simón, although she could. His cousin is not his cousin, but the feelings accumulated for years in the director germinate on the screen. In Cannes, about this echoing game between his biography and film fiction, Simon pointed out: “It is normal for people to identify with me because they already know my story. But I did not make the trip to Vigo in this way or with that age, the family structure is different … At this point I have already learned to knead my story. Because because Pilgrimage It is born from the frustration of not knowing much about my parents. I understood that I had to invent for the narration to work. “By the way, its two previous long ones already represented Spain in the Hollywood statuette.
Sorda. After passing through the Berlinale, the drama written and directed by Eva Libertad that enters the motherhood of a non -listener woman, was the great winner of the Malaga Festival in March with four awards: Gold Biznaga for the best Spanish film, Silver Biznaga – Public Prize El País and two recognitions for its protagonists, Miriam Garlo (sister of the director) and Álvaro Cervantes. In the German capital, Garlo and Libertad recognized that without one of the two there would not have been the film: “Miriam told me once I was recorded,” said the director. “When we were starting the process, he confessed to me: ‘Do you realize that we have been preparing for this without knowing?’
Two decades without winning that Oscar
The snow society It is the last Spanish film, two editions, in achieving the Oscar nomination for Best International Film. Before Ja Bayona’s film, produced by Netflix, the last Spanish candidates to reach the great Hollywood academy gala were Pain and glory, by Pedro Almodóvar (2019), and Inward seaby Alejandro Amenábar, who won the statuette in 2004.
As for how the selection of other countries is going, Norway has done its duties and has chosen Valor sentimental, by Joachim Trier, a film that probably enters more categories of the Oscars. Tunisia sends The Voice of Hind Rajab they kaouther ben hania (The four daughters), One of the phenomena that will be catapulted by Venice, and to which Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer have joined as executive producers, thanks to the narration of the murder (it is a real story) of a six -year -old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, in January 2024, when he traveled in his four cousins and his aunt and uncle, a vehicle that was attacked by the Israeli army when the family tried to leave Gaza. In addition, South Korea has chosen No Other choice, of the teacher Park Chan-wook; Sweden sends Eagles of the Republic, de Put Saleh (Confidential Cairo); Philippines has selected Magellan, from Lav Diaz, with Gael García Bernal as the Portuguese sailor; Islandia a The Love That Remains, de Hlynur Pálmason (Godland); Germany sends to the powerful Sound Of Falling, of Mascha Schilinski (shared the jury award in Cannes with Sirât); Bulgaria a Target; Palestine has chosen Palestine 36; Ireland bet on the documentary Sanatorium, That is in Ukrainian because it focuses on the Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a large building of the 1970s near Odesa, in southern Ukraine; Austria goes with Peacock; Japan with Mocked, of Lee Sang-il; Canada will participate with The Things You Killby Alireza Khatami; Chile has chosen The mysterious look of flamenco, by Diego Céspedes, winner of the section a certain look in the past Cannes; Thailand has selected A Useful Ghost; Belgium can go far with Young Mothers, of the veterans Dardenne brothers, and for the first time Papua New Guinea enters, with Papa is open.
In this category, films of any format (documentary, fiction, animation or format hybrids) compete for at least 40 minutes and with dialogues that cannot exceed 50% in English. In the last edition 85 countries sent a film to the Oscars.
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About the firm
He is editor of the Culture Section, specialized in cinema. In the newspaper he worked before, the spectator and temptations. He started at local radios in Madrid, and has collaborated in various film publications such as Cinemania or Academia. He has a degree in journalism from the Complutense University and Master in International Relations.
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