The UK Sent a Documentary About Iran to the Oscars, and It Says a Lot About the Category

The UK has picked its entry for the Best International Feature Oscar, and it isn't a British drama. It's a documentary about Iran. Rehearsals for a Revolution, directed by Pegah Ahangarani, was selected this week as the country's submission for the 99th Academy Awards.

Here's what it is. Ahangarani, who also appears in the film, tells her own life alongside more than four decades of Iranian history, using five portraits of family members and mentors, plus home movies, protest footage, newspaper reports and oral testimony. It runs 101 minutes, in Persian and English. It premiered in Special Screenings at Cannes in May and won the L'Œil d'or, the festival's documentary prize. Sony Pictures Classics picked it up after Cannes.

Two things are worth knowing about how this category works. First, "international feature" doesn't mean a foreign-language film from a country's own industry. Each country (in the UK's case, a selection committee of BAFTA film committee members) nominates one film, and co-productions and personal documentaries can and do get through. Choosing this one is a statement about what the committee thinks British film culture actually produces right now: films made with multiple countries' money behind them.

Second, the selection is only the start. Cineuropa's roundup lists the rest of the European field, including Belgium's Coward from Lukas Dhont, Poland's Fatherland from Paweł Pawlikowski, and Romania's Fjord from Cristian Mungiu. Denmark picked Woman Unknown, the Venice winner we covered last month. The submission deadline is November 12, finalists come on December 15, and nominees on January 21, with the ceremony on March 14, 2027.

Cineuropa also notes a rule tweak: it says non-English-language films that win the top prize at festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Sundance or Venice can now be submitted. I'd check the Academy's own wording before reading too much into that.

Documentaries have a harder road in this category than fiction, since voters have to pick them over narrative films with bigger casts and bigger crying scenes. But a Cannes prize and a US distributor give this one a real shot at the shortlist. I'd watch the December 15 list.