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As we’re still trying to settle into the rhythm of a new year, 2025’s biggest event in film is already descending upon us.
This year’s Academy Awards ceremony, set to take place on March 2, already promises to be different to what we’ve come to expect in recent years. For one, unlike Oppenheimer last year or Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023, there is no industry favourite to take home the most prizes, and the shortlisted movies for the 97th Oscars also find plenty of space for movies directed by filmmakers from South West Asia and North Africa.
Five movies from the region – two more than last year – have made the Academy’s shortlist across three categories, marking an exciting time for regional stories on the global stage. These stories are defined by turbulent geopolitical realities and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Three of the five films are about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the other two are deeply rooted in the political upheaval that has taken place in Afghanistan and Iran in the last few years.
This represents a shift from recent years. Although many of the region’s films distinguished by the Academy over the last few years have been political documentaries, this year marks the first time the Academy has shortlisted multiple movies about life in Palestine – and 2025 is also the first time in over a decade that the official Palestinian submission has been shortlisted for International Feature Film.
Here are the five movies from the SWANA region in the Oscars shortlist:
Hollywoodgate
Directed by: Ibrahim Nash’at
Country of Production: Germany, United States
Category: Documentary Feature
As he saw harrowing footage of scores of Afghan civilians at the Kabul airport, overawed by a sense of panic and looking for an escape as the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021, Egyptian journalist and documentary filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at decided he would travel to Afghanistan and film the Taliban to create a portrait of the people set to govern the 40 million living in the country.
In Hollywoodgate, Nash’at chronicles the everyday life of Taliban commanders over the course of a year to offer a glimpse into the consequences of, and the individuals behind, the overnight transformation of Afghan life and politics. And his documentary has a lot of momentum going into the Oscars race, having already racked up plenty of accolades, including wins at the Zurich, Adelaide and El Gouna film festivals.
No Other Land
Directed by: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Country of Production: Palestine, Norway
Category: Documentary Feature
In No Other Land, activist Basel Adra and journalist Yuval Abraham document and resist the occupying Israeli forces’ relentless attempts to destroy the communities of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank.
A chilling, raw and forceful look into the brutality with which Israel ravages Palestinian communities, No Other Land lays bare the uninhibited racism and disregard for human life that defines the occupation, for which it has already won some of cinema’s most prestigious awards, including the Berlinale Documentary Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
From Ground Zero
Directed by: 22 Gazan Filmmakers
Country of Production: Palestine
Category: International Feature
Comprised of 22 short films directed by Palestinian storytellers under siege in Gaza, From Ground Zero brings together a collection of documentaries, fiction and animation films to showcase the agonising reality of life in Gaza in the midst of the ongoing genocide.
Gaza-born filmmaker Rashid Masharawi established a fund to support young Palestinian filmmakers, enabling them to share their stories through cinema, and Masharawi played a key role in both the production and post-production of the short films that make up From Ground Zero.
The only anthology nominated in its category, From Ground Zero had its premiere at the Amman International Film Festival in July 2024 – just two months after being withdrawn from the Cannes Film Festival due to the nature of its subject matter. Like No Other Land, this film has offered international audiences a glimpse into the brutality of life under occupation in Palestine, for which it has got the attention of the Academy.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Directed by: Mohammad Rasoulof
Country of Production: Iran, Germany
Category: International Feature
Four years after his harrowing feature film about the death penalty, There Is No Evil, won the Golden Bear – the most prestigious award at the Berlin Film Festival – Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof premiered another politically charged and critically-acclaimed feature film last May, this time at the Cannes Film Festival.
This political thriller, starring Soheila Golestani, centres on paranoia and nationwide protests arising from the death of a young woman in a plot inspired by – and with striking resemblances to – the protests in Iran in late 2022 and 2023.
Ahead of The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s premiere, Rasoulof was sentenced to 8 years in prison by Iranian authorities, as a result of which he fled to Germany, which presented Rasoulof’s film to the Academy as its official submission. The Seed of the Sacred Fig won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was also nominated for the Palme d’Or – the festival’s highest prize.
An Orange from Jaffa
Directed by: Mohammed Almughanni
Country of Production: Palestine, Poland, France
Category: Live Action Short
A Palestinian-Polish-French co-production written and directed by Palestinian filmmaker Mohammed Almughanni, An Orange from Jaffa is an unapologetic and raw portrayal of the impossibility for Palestinians to travel freely in their own land. It is a short about a young Palestinian man who embarks on a tense journey to cross an Israeli checkpoint with a temporary Polish residence card.
An Orange from Jaffa won the Grand Prize at the 46th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in February 2024, and it has also won awards at other international festivals, including the Leeds International Film Festival and El Gouna Film Festival.
While these five movies are the only stories directed by filmmakers from the region that have been shortlisted, there are scores of other films with SWANA representation in some form distinguished by the Academy. The Apprentice, about Donald Trump’s rise as a businessman in the 70s and 80s, is directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi; Canadian submission Universal Language features Iranian actors; and the 40-minute short Until He’s Back, directed by Mexican filmmaker Jacqueline Baylon, tells a Morrocan refugee story.
Whether any of these films make it out of the shortlist and become part of the official nominees in their respective categories will be determined on January 23, when the final Oscars nominations will be announced. The announcement was initially set to be made on the 17th but has been pushed multiple times as a result of the wildfires in Los Angeles.
The awards ceremony is set to take place on March 2 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, and will be hosted by Conan O’Brien.
Words: Hamza Shehryar
