Five Ukrainian Films Included in Oscar 2025 Lists

The American Film Academy has released the official qualifying lists of films eligible for consideration for the 97th Academy Awards. They include 5 Ukrainian films. This was reported on the Academy's website.

The lists have now been published in the categories of International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, and Documentary Feature Film. In total, they include 169 films.

Philip Sotnychenko's film La Palisade will represent Ukraine at the Oscars and will be presented in the International Feature Film category.

‘La Palisade' is Philip Sotnychenko's feature debut. The film's genre is called post-Soviet noir. The events take place in Ukraine in 1996, a few months before the signing of Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provided for the abolition of the death penalty.

The film tells the story of a forensic psychiatrist who is to take part in the investigation of the murder of a policeman. Law enforcement officials are in a hurry to close the case before the death penalty is abolished, but the doctor is not sure of the defendant's sanity. And when he sees how forensic experiments are conducted on the suspect, he begins to doubt the transparency of the law enforcement system.

Poland presented the film 'Under the Volcano' in the International Film category. The film tells the story of a Ukrainian family during the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The film stars Ukrainian actors.

The script was written by Polish director Damian Kocur and Marta Konarzewska. The film was directed by Mykyta Kuzmenko. Ukrainian actors Roman Lutskyi, Anastasia Karpenko, Sofia Berezovska and Fedir Puhachov play the main roles.

In addition to the films by Philip Sotnychenko and Damian Kotsur, three other Ukrainian and co-produced films were shortlisted in the Feature Documentary category:

‘Porcelain War' by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev tells about the war in Ukraine through the lives of three Ukrainians, artists of porcelain animal art - Slava Leontiev (who also directed), his wife Anya Stasenko and Andriy Stefanov.

‘Peaceful People', directed by Oksana Karpovych, who received the UP 100 award, is based on radio intercepts of telephone conversations between Russian occupiers and their families. They sound against the backdrop of images of the destruction brought to Ukraine by the occupier and strike with their casual attitude to the cruelty towards Ukrainians.

‘After the rain: Putin's Stolen Children Come Home’ by Canadian filmmaker Sarah McCarthy is about children who were illegally taken by the Russian occupiers. They were returned to Ukraine and now the main characters are recovering from their experience.

The 97th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on the night of 3 March. It will traditionally take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

The ceremony will be hosted by American comedian Conan O'Brien. He is the host of the NBC evening show ‘Late Night with Conan O'Brien’.

The comedian will replace TV presenter Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted the ceremony four times: for the first time in 2017, and then Kimmel took to the stage of the world's main film award in 2018, 2023 and 2024.