Art & Culture

4 Arab Titles to Compete at the 2025 Oscars

BYYassine Hariss

December 17, 2025

For the first time in Oscars history, four Arab films are competing simultaneously for Best International Feature Film—an unprecedented milestone that marks the most consequential year yet for the region’s presence at the Academy Awards. Announced this week, the selections span four different Arab countries, signaling not just increased visibility, but a broader recalibration of whose stories are being allowed into the global cinematic conversation.

Arab cinema rarely occupies this much space at the Oscars, let alone collectively. This year, that presence comes through The Voice of Hind Rajab, The President’s Cake, All That’s Left of You, and Palestine 36—films emerging from Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine respectively. While distinct in form and setting, they are united by a commitment to intimate storytelling rooted in political, historical, and lived realities long sidelined by Western awards circuits.

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Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab unfolds almost in real time, following Red Crescent volunteers as they receive an emergency call from a six-year-old girl trapped in a car under Israeli fire in Gaza. Sparse and devastating, the film relies on voice, absence, and urgency, transforming a single phone call into an indictment of systemic violence and global inaction.

From Jordan, Cherien Dabis’ All That’s Left of You moves between generations, framing a Palestinian teenager’s involvement in a West Bank protest through his mother’s recollection of their family’s history. What begins as a contemporary moment of unrest gradually expands into a meditation on inheritance of trauma, resistance, and endurance, where personal memory and political reality become inseparable.

That thread continues in Palestine 36, directed by Annemarie Jacir, which reaches further back into history to the 1936 Palestinian revolt against British colonial rule. Set between Jerusalem and the countryside, the film traces a nation on the brink through the eyes of Yusuf, as unrest builds and imperial power begins to fracture.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s entry, The President’s Cake by Hasan Hadi, approaches authoritarianism through the eyes of a child. Set in 1990s Iraq, the film follows nine-year-old Lamia as she is tasked with baking Saddam Hussein’s birthday cake—a compulsory ritual that carries the threat of punishment if she fails. What unfolds is a quietly tense portrait of life under surveillance, where innocence collides with the absurd cruelty of power.

The 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 16, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Whether or not these films take home a statuette, their collective presence has already made history.

4 Arab Titles to Compete at the 2025 Oscars

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4 Arab Titles to Compete at the 2025 Oscars

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