Iran‘s official selection committee has picked Ali Zarnegar’s thriller Cause of Death: Unknown to represent the country for the 2026 Oscar race in the best international feature category.
The drama follows a group of strangers traveling through Iran’s Lut Desert. When one of them suddenly dies in the middle of the night, emergency services refuse to send an ambulance because the cause of death hasn’t been verified by a doctor. Searching the body, the men find no ID but a lot of money and are forced to confront a moral and ethical dilemma: Do they bring the body to a hospital or bury the corpse and split the cash?
Cause of Death: Unknown premiered at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2023, where it won the best cinematography prize for cameraman Davood Malek Hosseini. But the film has a low international profile and is unlikely to make the Oscar shortlist, much less secure a nomination.
A much higher-profile Iranian film, Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, has made France’s 5-film shortlist of potential Oscar contenders and would be a near shoo-in should it be selected. Neon acquired the movie out of Cannes and is positioning it for an awards run. The other French Oscar contenders are Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, Rebecca Zlotowski’s Jodie Foster-starrer A Private Life, Ugo Bienvenu’s animated feature Arco, and Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister.
A total of 3 films submitted by Iran have secured Oscar nominations: Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven in 1999, and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and The Salesman, both of which won in 2012 and 2017, respectively. Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian-set The Seed of the Sacred Fig was nominated in the best international feature category for the 2025 Academy Awards, after being submitted by Germany.
The Academy will announce the first shortlist of 15 films in contention for the 2026 best international feature Oscar on Dec. 16, 2025. The final nominations will be announced on Jan. 22, 2026. The 98th Academy Awards Ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026.
