“The Stranger”, Paolo Strippoli’s film presented during the 83rd Venice Film Festival, will bring the colors of Italy to the Academy Awards. On 23 September the Selection Committee for the Italian film to be nominated for the Oscars, established by ANICA on behalf of the Academy, composed of Giorgio Carlo Brugnoni, Cristina Comencini, Federica Lucisano, Francesco Melzi D’Eril, Niccolò Vivarelli, chose Paolo Strippoli’s film as the film that will represent Italy at the 99th edition of the Academy Awards, in the selection for the International Feature Film Award category, i.e. the Oscar prize for the best international film.
The film already has an international path behind it, given that it was presented in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, where it received the ARCA CinemaGiovani Award for best Italian film and then placed second at the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award in Toronto, and is expected in theaters in Italy from 8 October with 01 Distribution.
What The Stranger is about
“The Stranger”, in cinemas starting next October 8, tells the story of Anna (Jasmine Trinca), mother of a family on the rise in the wealthy Bari area, who to save her daughter makes a pact with a mysterious Mephistophelian entity played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, triggering a spiral of guilt, grief and desperation that the woman reveals years later to her daughter Alice. The story, which proceeds like a spiral that drags the protagonist ever closer to the center of evil, is in all respects a gothic horror story that intertwines the fantastic with the vices of an Italy made up of impeccable appearances, bullying, discrimination and suffocating family ambitions. Strippoli confirms a rare talent on the Italian scene, with a direction of great visual impact and a growing tension supported by excellent writing.
“Because it is a new genre film, by a young author, who has recently begun his journey and has been appreciated by the public and by national and international critics”, is the official motivation of the selection committee. “We welcome with great joy the designation of the film as the stranger to represent Italy in the Oscar race”, are the words of the CEO of Rai Cinema Paolo Del Brocco, who underlines the weight of a verdict arrived after a competition crowded with titles with a high authorial and production profile. The CEO describes “The Stranger” as “a courageous film, which uses the codes of genre cinema to tell the story of family bonds, the fears and the deepest fragilities of the human being”.
How the Academy selection works and when the awards ceremony will be
According to the official regulations, in order to compete for the awards of the 99th edition of the Oscars, an international feature film must be longer than 40 minutes, must be produced outside the United States of America and its territories, with a dialogue track predominantly (over 50%) in a language other than English.
Once the nomination is submitted, nominations are determined by two rounds of voting. A preliminary round in which all active members and lifetime members of the Academy are invited to view the films admitted to the category. Once the works have been viewed, the members vote by secret ballot, in order of preference, for no more than fifteen films. The fifteen films with the highest number of votes advance to the next round.
So the first verdict comes in mid-December. The fifteen films that have obtained the most votes will move on to the next round and the list will be announced on 15 December 2026. Overcoming this obstacle is not a given given that last year Familia by Francesco Costabile, designated by Italy for the 98th edition, did not make the shortlist.
Subsequently, all Academy members are invited to view the fifteen films on the shortlist and vote in order of preference for no more than five films. The five films with the highest number of votes become the nominations for the final vote for the Best International Film award.
So the first goal to achieve is entry into the shortlist of fifteen international films that the Academy will make public on 15 December 2026. Following this, on 21 January 2027, there will be the announcement of the official nominations, while the awards ceremony is set for 14 March 2027.
The other films in the running for the Oscar for best international film
Over seventy countries have already indicated their candidate ready to compete for the top five, and even before that for the shortlist of the category for best international film. Among the titles in competition this year are Fjord by Cristian Mungiu, Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, for Romania, Minotaur by Russian Andrey Zvyagintsev for France, Fatherland by Paweł Pawlikowski for Poland, La Bola Negra by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for Spain. Japan chose All of a Sudden by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, already an Oscar winner with Drive My Car, and South Korea chose Possible Love by Lee Chang-dong, presented in Venice. Norway, reigning champion with Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier, starts again from Growth of the Soil by Hans Petter Moland, based on the novel that earned Knut Hamsun the Nobel, while Germany chose Everytime by Sandra Wollner.
To make the race even more competitive there is a novelty introduced this year by the Academy, namely that a non-English language film that has won in one of the six recognized festivals, therefore Golden Bear in Berlin, Palme d’Or in Cannes, Golden Lion in Venice, in addition to the prizes indicated for Busan, Sundance and Toronto, can enter the race even without having been chosen by the committee of its own country.
