The Academy Award for best international feature film — known until this season as the best foreign-language film Oscar — will go to one of 93 countries that have submitted entries this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Monday.
Also notable: the United Kingdom's entry, Chichewa-language The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, was directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a best actor Oscar nominee for 2013's 12 Years a Slave.
The list includes productions from every continent except Antarctica, and features contenders from Ghana, Nigeria and Uzbekistan for the first time. The highest-profile entries among them, as of this date, are South Korea's Parasite (Bong Joon Ho's dramedy was awarded Cannes' Palme d'Or), which is being released by Neon; Spain's Pain and Glory (from director Pedro Almodovar, a past winner for 1999's All About My Mother), a Sony Classics title; France's Les Miserables (from helmer Ladj Ly), via Amazon; and Senegal's Atlantics (for which Mati Diop became the first black female director ever to have a film in competition at Cannes, where it was awarded the Grand Prix), from Netflix.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines an international feature film as "a feature-length motion picture (more than 40 minutes) produced outside the United States with a predominantly non-English dialogue track."
A shortlist of 10 films — one more than in years past — will be announced Dec. 16. Nominations in all categories will be announced Jan. 13, 2020, and the 92nd Oscars are set to be held Feb. 9.
