November 14: Italy and Germany go into the race for the 2027 Oscar for International Feature Film with two of this year’s festival films. Italy has picked L’estranea (The Stranger), a genre film by Paolo Strippoli that premiered in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, and Germany has chosen Everytime, Sandra Wollner’s third feature, which won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes. The Academy will name its 15-film shortlist on December 15.
Key highlights
- Italy: L’estranea, chosen on September 23 from 21 Italian titles by a committee set up by ANICA at the Academy’s request.
- Germany: Everytime, chosen on August 25 by an independent nine-member jury from 11 submissions.
- Public money: Italy’s culture ministry gave L’estranea €61,000 for development in 2023 and €350,000 for production in 2025.
- Asia link: No Good Men, the Kabul-set film by Shahrbanoo Sadat, was among Germany’s 11 submissions.
- Timeline: shortlist December 15; nominations January 21, 2027; ceremony March 14, 2027.
The two films
| L’estranea (Italy) | Everytime (Germany) | |
|---|---|---|
| Director | Paolo Strippoli | Sandra Wollner (also the writer) |
| World premiere | 83rd Venice Film Festival, in competition | 79th Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard |
| Production | Propaganda Italia, Dinamo Film, Kazak Productions, Tarantula | The Barricades, with Panama Film (Austria) and ZDF |
| Home release | October 8, 2026, by 01 Distribution | August 6, 2026, by eksystent filmverleih Kijas |
| Cast | Jasmine Trinca, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Adriano Giannini, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Mariandrea Cesari | Not listed by German Films |
Italy: a genre film by a young director
The committee that chose L’estranea included Giorgio Carlo Brugnoni, director general of cinema and audiovisual at the culture ministry, Cristina Comencini, Federica Lucisano, Francesco Melzi D’Eril and Niccolò Vivarelli. It voted in front of a notary. Explaining its choice, the committee called L’estranea “un film nuovo, di genere, di un giovane autore”, a new genre film by a young director, and said it had been well received by audiences and critics in Italy and abroad.
Germany: grief on a Tenerife holiday
In Everytime, two years after Jessie’s death, her mother Ella, her younger sister and the boy the family blames go on holiday to Tenerife, where memory and the present blur. The film also won the Heart of Sarajevo Grand Prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival. German Films’ jury said the film makes grief tangible “through purely cinematic means” and called it “a truly poetic cinematic experience”. The jury included representatives of producers’ and directors’ associations, screenwriters, distributors, cinemas and the German Film Academy.
The other films submitted to German Films included Volker Schlöndorff’s Visitation, Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure, Faraz Shariat’s Prosecution and Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur.
Our calculation
| Question | Answer | How we got it |
|---|---|---|
| Italian titles in contention for the one slot | 21 | Directorate-General for Cinema figure |
| Selective public grants to L’estranea | €411,000 | €61,000 + €350,000 |
| Days from Italy’s pick to the shortlist | 83 | September 23 to December 15 |
| Days from today to the Oscars ceremony | 120 | November 14 to March 14, 2027 |
What it means for India and Asia
European selections increasingly carry Asian stories and money. Germany’s list included No Good Men, set in Kabul, which won the Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards on October 30. Italy is a co-producer of The Violinist, the Singapore–Spain–Italy animation that won Best Animated Film at the same awards. Asian entries will be competing against both films for the five nomination slots.
What to watch
- The Academy’s list of all films submitted in the category.
- The 15-film shortlist on December 15.
- Nominations on January 21, 2027.
Jasmine Trinca, director Paolo Strippoli, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Adriano Giannini and Romana Maggiora Vergano presenting L’estranea at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Image: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Photo source · Licence
Sources
- ANICA: L’estranea designated to represent Italy at the 99th Academy Awards
- Italian Ministry of Culture, Directorate-General for Cinema and Audiovisual: L’estranea in the Oscar race
- German Films: EVERYTIME enters the Oscar race
- German Films: Eleven films submitted for the 99th Oscar competition
- Asia Pacific Screen Awards: 2026 winners
The Entertainment Desk covers cinema from India, Asia and Hollywood: releases, box office, awards and festivals, reported from official announcements. Stories are checked against at least two credible sources before publication.
