Latin American Films Storm Oscars With Grit, Memory, And Magic
From neo-noir thrillers to folk horror and fierce legal dramas, Latin American filmmakers are charging into this year’s international Oscar race with stories of memory, resistance, and identity that resonate far beyond their borders, for voters weary of formulaic prestige.
A Region Arrives At The Awards With Real Momentum
We are still more than three months away from the 98th Academy Awards. Still, the race for Best International Feature highlights Latin America’s growing influence, with 13 submissions that carry strong festival credentials and political messages. These festival wins signal increased regional momentum and critical recognition, which helps readers understand the rising prominence of Latin American cinema.
Leading the charge is Brazil’s O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent), which dominated Cannes 2025, scooping four major prizes, including Best Director for Kleber Mendonça Filho, Best Actor for Wagner Moura, the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Art House Cinema Award. The film’s neo-noir tale of a former professor fleeing persecution during Brazil’s brutal 1977 military dictatorship taps directly into the Academy’s long-standing appetite for politically grounded thrillers. If it makes the shortlist, it could give Brazil a rare chance at back‑to‑back wins, following Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, last year’s Oscar winner, with its own story of life under the 1970s regime.
Cannes also elevated two other regional contenders. Chile’s La misteriosa mirada del flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo), the debut feature from Diego Céspedes, won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section with its eerie coming‑of‑age story set in a desert mining town gripped by homophobic panic over a mythical disease “transmitted” when one man falls in love with another through a single gaze. Colombia’s Un Poeta (A Poet), by Simón Mesa Soto, took the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, blending tragicomedy and melancholy in the tale of a washed‑up writer in Medellín seeking redemption as he mentors a young student. These festival wins matter. They give voters a curated path into films that might otherwise be overshadowed in a crowded field dominated by European heavyweights and Asian auteurs.
For all that visibility, Oscar wins for the region remain scarce. In the past 15 years, only Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes, Chile’s A Fantastic Woman, and Mexico’s Roma have taken home the statue. This year’s crop is a reminder that the quality and diversity of Latin American cinema have long outpaced its trophy count, and that the Academy’s tastes are only slowly catching up.
Dictatorships, Rights, And The Politics Of Memory
Many films explore themes of memory and resistance, making their stories feel vital and relevant, encouraging the audience to see their ongoing significance and fostering a sense of shared purpose in confronting these issues.
What unites many of the entries is an insistence on grappling with law, power, and historical trauma. Argentina’s Belén, directed by and starring Dolores Fonzi, is a muscular legal thriller that also doubles as a human rights drama. Based on Ana Correa’s non-fiction book Somos Belén, it follows fearless lawyer Soledad Deza as she fights to free Julieta, a young, impoverished woman wrongly imprisoned for an illegal abortion. As Forbes notes, the film, produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Argentina’s K&S Films, taps into the real-life case that galvanized a nationwide movement for reproductive justice. Streaming on Prime Video gives it a global platform that could resonate with Academy voters in a post‑Roe world.
History’s unfinished business drives several other submissions. Mexico’s No Nos Moverán (We Shall Not Be Moved), the monochrome debut of Pierre Saint Martin Castellanos, follows Socorro, a 67‑year‑old retired lawyer whose life’s mission is to identify the soldier who killed her brother during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, when government forces brutally suppressed student protests in Mexico City. Decades later, a new clue sends her on a dangerous, darkly comic quest that threatens her family bonds. The film has already won Best Mexican Film at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and four Ariel Awards, including Best First Feature and Best Actress for Luisa Huertas, strengthening its awards‑season profile.
Paraguay’s Bajo las Banderas, el Sol (Under the Flags, the Sun) digs into one of the hemisphere’s longest dictatorships: Alfredo Stroessner’s 35‑year rule. Director Juanjo Pereira uses abandoned government archives and recovered footage from Paraguay and abroad to expose how propaganda and media manipulation underpinned the regime’s power, earning the FIPRESCI Prize at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. From another angle, Costa Rica’s El monaguillo, el cura y el jardinero (The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener), by Juan Manuel Fernández, is a patient documentary giving voice to two men seeking justice decades after being sexually abused by their local priest. This story intersects with global reckonings inside the Catholic Church while remaining rooted in local scars.
Taken together, these films insist that questions of dictatorship, reproductive rights, state violence, and institutional complicity are not just history but ongoing struggles. This regional cinema’s political engagement can inspire admiration and a sense of shared purpose in the audience.
New Genres, New Voices, Same Urgency
The slate is not all courtroom battles and political dossiers. Several entries push into bolder genre territory, broadening what ‘Oscar‑friendly’ international cinema can look like and inspiring curiosity about Latin America’s creative risks and artistic confidence.
The Dominican Republic’s Pepe, from Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias, might be the most formally daring of the bunch. This docudrama is told through the eyes of the first and last hippo killed in the Americas, a surreal perspective that impressed Berlin enough to win the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2024 Berlinale. By centering an animal narrator, Pepe refracts colonial histories, ecological violence, and Caribbean identity through a lens that is both playful and disquieting.
Panama’s Beloved Tropic, the narrative debut of Ana Endara, offers a quieter, more intimate dual-character study. It pairs a pregnant Colombian immigrant struggling with her status in Panama City with a wealthy matriarch sliding into dementia, played by Paulina García, the Berlinale Best Actress winner for Gloria. The women’s unexpected bond in a secluded garden becomes a meditation on care, migration, and fading memory. Peru’s Kinra, el viaje de Atoqcha (Motherland), by Marco Patonic, tells a more straightforward but equally resonant story: a young man leaving his Andean village to study engineering in Cusco, torn between family obligations and city ambitions. Its Golden Astor win at Mar del Plata in 2023 marks it as a strong arthouse contender.
Uruguay’s Agarrame fuerte (Don’t You Let Me Go), from writer‑director duo Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, brings the focus back to childhood and loss. Premiering at Tribeca, the film follows a young girl as she navigates the death of her best friend, treating grief and female friendship with a tenderness that could appeal to Academy voters seeking emotional, character‑driven narratives amid heavier political fare.
A Region Ready For Its Close-Up
The Venezuelan entry, Alí Primera, directed by Daniel Yegres, rounds out the list with a biographical drama about the singer‑songwriter known as “El Cantor del Pueblo” – “The People’s Singer”. Portrayed by Eduardo González, Primera emerges as a symbol of musical activism, his journey from humble childhood to national voice for social change echoing the region’s enduring tradition of protest art.
Taken as a whole, the 13 Latin American submissions showcase an industry that is both artistically confident and thematically restless. They span legal dramas, biopics, horror, documentaries, and hybrid forms, but they share an insistence on looking unflinchingly at power, memory, gender, and inequality. As Forbes notes, many of these stories are backed by severe festival exposure and, in cases like Belén, the marketing muscle of global platforms such as Prime Video.
The Academy will announce its shortlist of 15 films on December 16, followed by final nominations on January 22, 2026, ahead of the Oscars ceremony on March 15, 2026. By the Academy’s own definition, an international feature is a feature‑length movie produced outside the United States with a predominantly non‑English dialogue track. Latin American contenders have long checked those boxes; this year, they also arrive with a clarity of purpose that feels harder to ignore.
Whether the region walks away with another golden statue or not, the 2026 race proves something important: Latin American cinema is not a side category, but a central voice in the global conversation about how film can confront history, comfort the wounded, and unsettle complacent audiences, all in the same two hours.
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