Three newcomers to watch for in the Oscars' international feature race

The Oscars’ planetary diagnostic people of 2026 includes sweeping epics, aggravated thrillers, achromatic comedies and haunting dramas, but 3 submissions enactment young pistillate performers astatine the forefront. Their stars, from Iraq, Chile and Argentina, are besides first-time oregon comparatively chartless actors. And their captivating performances show the wealthiness of on-screen endowment hidden successful each corners of the world.

‘The President’s Cake’

(Sony Pictures Classics)

For astir 20 years, Iraqi schoolchildren lived successful fearfulness implicit the day of Saddam Hussein. The celebrations required that 1 student, selected randomly, cook a barroom successful grant of the nation’s authoritarian ruler — a task requiring clip and resources prohibitive to overmuch of the population. For filmmaker Hasan Hadi, it’s an acquisition that haunts him to this day.

“One twelvemonth I was picked arsenic a angiosperm boy. Flowers were overmuch easier due to the fact that usually teachers don’t truly attraction astir them due to the fact that they’re not edible,” Hadi explains. “But the happening is, my person was picked for the day cake, and helium couldn’t marque it. And his destiny wholly changed. He got recruited to Saddam’s children army. He was expelled from the school. And I consciousness similar it was benignant of chasing me. This endurance guilt. What if it was me?”

Hadi’s diagnostic directorial debut, “Cake” follows Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef), a 9-year-old surviving with her grandma successful Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes. Lamia’s beingness is turned upside down arsenic she faces 1 obstacle aft different to cook the cake. As with astir the full cast, Nayef was a first-time actor, and Hadi was admittedly tense arsenic they were coming down to the ligament successful casting the role.

“One day, my person recorded a mates of kids connected the street, and she was 1 of them,” Hadi recalls. “It was a 30-second video. She says her name, her people oregon school. And I instantly felt like, ‘OK, this is the kid I deliberation tin clasp the movie together.’ I called the parents, and they were against it. They refused to bash thing with the film.”

Eventually, contempt their fears implicit however their girl would beryllium judged by Iraqi society, Hadi convinced Nayef’s parents to relent and fto her participate. Months later, the full household attended the Cannes Film Festival, wherever “Cake” took the Audience Award successful the Director’s Fortnight sidebar, partially acknowledgment to her captivating performance.

“I truly anticipation she continues acting,” Hadi says. “I truly deliberation she tin beryllium 1 of those stars that tin springiness commencement to truthful galore films successful Iraq.”

‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo’

(Festival de Cannes)

To bring his imaginative melodrama acceptable successful a fictional Chilean mining municipality to life, Diego Céspedes was connected the hunt for a cabaret of standout queer resistance performers. The young manager worked intimately with the community, auditioning nonprofessional and nonrecreational actors, but admits “it was a truly hard job” that took a twelvemonth and a half. The priority, however, was casting 11-year-old Lidia, a young miss whose aboriginal comes undone arsenic a “plague,” the AIDS crisis, envelops everyone astir her. Céspedes recovered his Lidia successful newcomer Tamara Cortés.

“We formed a batch of girls, but Tamara was right, and she had the attitude,” Céspedes recalls. “She was ace comic and, the astir important thing, she didn’t person immoderate prejudices with the girls of the canteen. They were conscionable radical for her. And now, they’re each adjacent radical to her. They’re household for her too.”

Céspedes admits that not each of the younger actors understood what they were getting into, and reveals that 1 young actor’s parents yet ended his engagement arsenic a effect of their homophobia and transphobia: “They didn’t accidental [it to us] but we heard a speech astir them, and they took the lad retired of the movie.”

That acquisition was much than assuaged by Cortés and by the beingness of magnificent trans histrion Paula Dinamarca, who portrays the clan’s seen-it-all matriarch, Madame Boa. Dinamarca had appeared successful respective documentary projects, and Céspedes initially recruited her for a abbreviated movie a fewer years ago. He recalls, “I told her, ‘I privation you back. I privation you to bash a existent character, fictional.’ She’s ace talented. And we did that abbreviated and she started to get calls for everything. And with this diagnostic film, they are calling her a batch present due to the fact that she’s a natural.”

‘Belén’

(Amazon MGM Studios)

As termination rights person receded successful the United States, they person been connected the march successful South America. In 2021, the Argentine authorities legalized the process for the archetypal clip and dropped each transgression charges against women accused of having them. But determination were galore battles to transverse this threshold, astir precocious surrounding the horrifying lawsuit of Belén (a pseudonym), a young pistillate who spent 3 years successful jailhouse aft suffering a miscarriage successful the blimpish state of Tucumán. Her condemnation was yet overturned acknowledgment to the crusading efforts of lawyer Soledad Deza, a communicative chronicled successful Dolores Fonzi’s appropriately titled “Belén.”

In the incorrect hands, the communicative could person ended up arsenic a sensationalized movie-of-the-week. Instead, Fonzi, who besides portrays Deza connected screen, crafts a captivating and almighty play that transcends the genre. Her astir important determination was casting the rubric role. She recovered her Belén, Camila Plaate, successful a documentary acceptable successful the aforesaid situation her taxable was incarcerated in.

“The [reenactment sequences in] the documentary were with these 2 girls, Camila Plaate and Ruth Plaate, who play Belén and her sister and who are sisters successful existent life,” Fonzi reveals. “So, I knew these 2 actresses from Tucumán were going to beryllium those actresses successful my movie.”

Winner of the champion supporting histrion prize astatine the 2025 San Sebastian Film Festival, Fonzi says Plaate was “amazing since infinitesimal one.” She adds, “I got a crush connected her and connected her sister, they’re precise beardown women, Tucumán artists. Tucumán is simply a precise blimpish town, and they are the resistance.”

As for immoderate fears that existent firebrand Argentine President Javier Milei and his La Libertad Avanza enactment could overturn the comparatively caller law, Fonzi believes attempting to bash truthful would beryllium “political suicide.”

“We got 6 cardinal radical successful the streets to marque the instrumentality happen,” Fonzi says. “He’s crazy. Nothing would astonishment me, but I don’t deliberation helium would participate successful that cave.”