France’s Oscar submission race for 2027 is shaping up around one particularly thorny question: What happens to a major film by an exiled filmmaker when no other country is realistically positioned to claim it? That is the dilemma surrounding Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” a scathing portrait of corruption in Putin’s Russia that won the Grand Prize at Cannes and is emerging as one of the strongest contenders to represent France in the international feature Oscar race. As in most years, many of the likely French Oscar candidates have emerged from the Croisette, but the 2027 field is striking for the number of prominent foreign filmmakers who made films in France or with substantial French financing, including Zvyagintsev, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Cristian Mungiu and Asghar Farhadi.
A dissident Russian filmmaker, Zvyagintsev is living in France with asylum status, while the film was largely financed and produced out of France by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema and MK2 Films, which reps international sales. Russia is not expected to submit it — especially after Zvyagintsev bravely used his Cannes acceptance speech to urge Putin to end the war. Its other coproducing countries have already picked other films: Germany selected Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime,” while Latvia, a minority co-producer, chose “Ulya.” If France passes, “Minotaur” — which Mubi has for U.S. distribution — could therefore fall through the cracks entirely despite its profile.
There is precedent for a film being courted by more than one country before landing nowhere: Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” was shortlisted in both France and India but ultimately failed to secure either country’s submission slot. The prospect is reopening a debate that erupted last year, when France chose another dissident filmmaker, Iran’s Jafar Panahi, and his Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” over Richard Linklater’s French-language “Nouvelle Vague.” Panahi’s film went on to score an Oscar nomination, but the choice sparked pushback in parts of the French industry over whether a country should be represented by a foreign-born filmmaker working largely outside the French language. The rules cut both ways for Zvyagintsev.
A 2025 Oscar amendment allows filmmakers granted asylum or refugee status to be considered part of their adoptive country’s filmmaking community, clearing the way for France to submit the director, whose last two films “Loveless” and “Leviathan” earned nominations under the Russian banner. A separate change now auto-qualifies any film that wins the top prize at one of the six biggest festivals — Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, Busan and Toronto — even without a national committee’s backing. The Academy proposed that fix after France failed to select “Anatomy of a Fall,” which went on to land five nominations and win original screenplay.
But “Minotaur” won the Grand Prize, not the Palme, so its fate rests squarely with a committee that has a track record of surprising choices. Sources tell Variety some members remain reluctant to select a foreign director whose film is not in French. The French committee, presided over by former Critics’ Week head Charles Tesson for the last couple years, is expected to meet on Sept. 10 to shortlist as many as five films, before reconvening the following week, on Sept. 16, to audition filmmakers and/or distributors and choose France’s official entry.
Another major international filmmaker in the mix is Hamaguchi, whose French-language “All of a Sudden” made a splash in Cannes competition, where stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared the best actress prize. It’s just been selected as Japan’s Oscar entry, beating Hirokazu Kore-eda who had a pair of potential contenders, “Sheep in the Box” and the Venice-bound “Look Back.” Produced primarily out of France with Cinefrance Studios alongside Japan’s Office Shirous and Bitters End, and picked up for the U.S. by Neon, it was submitted to both the French and Japanese committees. But according to a source close to the campaign, Neon was always leaning toward positioning it as Japan’s entry rather than France’s, in part on timing: Japan chose its entry well before the French committee begins deliberations.
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