Latin America and the Caribbean are sending 17 films into the race for best international feature at the 99th Academy Awards, from a Venice prizewinner out of Mexico to the first submission El Salvador has ever made.
Screen International's running list of submissions shows the region's entries alongside the full field. The Academy will name a 15-film shortlist on Dec. 15, announce nominees on Jan. 21 and hand out the Oscars on March 14, 2027. Last year, Brazil's The Secret Agent landed among the five nominees.
The films to know
Mexico enters David Pablos' On the Road, a long-haul trucking drama that won best film in Venice's Orizzonti section and the Queer Lion. Guatemala's Jayro Bustamante returns for a fourth time with Mountains of Fire, about a new volcano that threatens Indigenous communities. Bustamante's La Llorona was the first Guatemalan film to make the shortlist.
The Dominican Republic's Melodrama, from Andrés Farías, follows a Dominican widow whose romance with a Haitian construction worker draws disapproval. Jimmy Jean-Louis is in the cast. The country has submitted 19 times without a nomination.
El Salvador makes its Oscar debut with Arturo López Rodas' black-and-white drama Vertices. Brazil, coming off last year's nomination, picked Allan Deberton's Gugu's World. Argentina, a two-time winner, sent Laura Casabé's supernatural horror film The Virgin of the Quarry Lake.
The rest of the region's slate:
Bolivia: The Condor Daughter (Álvaro Olmos Torrico)
Chile: The Meltdown (Manuela Martelli)
Colombia: Rains Over Babel (Gala del Sol)
Costa Rica: If We Don't Burn, How Do We Light Up the Night (Kim Torres)
Cuba: Malecon (Carlos Larrazabal)
Ecuador: The Ivy (Ana Cristina Barragán)
Panama: Chichero (Aarón Bromley and Arturo Montenegro)
Paraguay: Narciso (Marcelo Martinessi)
Peru: Night Has Come (Paolo Tizón)
Uruguay: A Loose End (Daniel Hendler)
Venezuela: Death Has No Master (Jorge Thielen Armand)
Several of these films center Indigenous, Afro-Caribbean and working-class stories. With five slots and a field of dozens of countries, the Dec. 15 shortlist will show how many of them stay in the conversation.
Read more: Cup of Soul on Brazil's 2027 Oscar pick and The Secret Agent's run last year.
