2025 Academy Awards

2025 International Films

Eighty-five countries entered films in the International category. I have seen 73 of them. For the fourth straight year, all five nominated films were directed by men. This is a shame because several of the films directed by women deserved to be in the top five. The ones that stand out for me are In Her Place, directed by Maite Alberdi; Lost Ladies, directed by Kiran Rao; and Santosh, directed by Sandhya Suri. All three of these films deal with both the societal restrictions faced by women and with income inequality and the unfair burdens placed on people who are not rich and powerful. One of the nominated films, The Girl with the Needle, also deals with the oppression of women and class inequality.

One trend of note is the ubiquitous presentation of people smoking cigarettes. It is as if the tobacco industry has flooded the world of international cinema with product placement funding. The same is true of films produced in the United States. This isn’t as bad as Ridley Scott and Matt Damon using Vicodin in place of ketchup, but some people who smoke tobacco do die of lung cancer. As I have noted previously, many of the scenes of people smoking seem arbitrary, not related to the period or the plot.

My tastes are not the same as those of Academy voters.  For example, this is the ninth straight year that my favorite International film did not win the Academy Award.