‘Fjord’ Qualifies for Oscars’ International Feature Category After Questions Over Amount of English Dialogue (EXCLUSIVE)

Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner “Fjord” has secured a pathway to eligibility in the international feature film category at the Oscars without needing a country to submit it.

Neon, which will distribute the film for theatrical release, confirms to Variety exclusively that “Fjord” meets the Academy’s requirements for non-English language submissions. The film features dialogue in English, Romanian, Norwegian and Swedish, it and meets the Academy’s mandate that a movie’s dialogue track be more than 50% in a language other than English with accurate and legible English subtitles. There was some uncertainty and speculation among critics and audiences who had seen the film at Cannes regarding the percentage of English spoken.

The qualification arrives courtesy of a significant rule change the Academy announced earlier this year. Films no longer need to be selected by a country’s official submission committee to compete for the international feature prize. Instead, a non-English-language title can qualify by winning a top prize at one of six approved festivals: the Golden Bear at Berlin, the Best Film Award at Busan, the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the Platform Award at Toronto or the Golden Lion at Venice.

“Fjord,” which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, automatically clears that threshold, freeing it from the uncertainty of national-committee processes in any number of countries, although it can still be selected. It could still ultimately be chosen by Romania or Norway and would need to meet any additional requirements to be its official selection.

The film stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian-Norwegian conservative couple whose lives unravel after they move to the wife’s progressive, remote Norwegian hometown and come under scrutiny from local authorities over their children. The story draws from the real-life case of the Bodnariu family, whose children were forcibly removed by Norwegian child welfare authorities.

Guy Lodge, chief film critic for Variety, called the film in his review a “superb new drama of systemic order and individual disarray, which takes in the sprawling waters and monochrome mountainscapes of the region with a placidly appreciative eye. It’s human nature, concentrated and scrutinized and made ugly amid this splendor, that causes all the alarm.”

This is potentially a mainstream breakout for Romanian director Mungiu, whose credits include the Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and directing and screenplay honors at Cannes for “Beyond the Hills” and “Graduation.”

Neon will be looking for major recognition this awards season beyond the international feature race. Awards buzz poured out of France in May when the film premiered. Stan is a previous best actor Oscar nominee for playing Donald Trump in the biopic “The Apprentice,” while Reinsve is coming off her first Oscar nom for best actress in the Norwegian drama “Sentimental Value.”

The Academy’s new festival pathway is already underway, which Variety described as the “Anatomy of a Fall” rule, a reference to Justine Triet’s 2023 Palme d’Or winner, which France declined to submit to the Oscars in favor of “The Taste of Things,” which failed to land a nomination. “Anatomy of a Fall” went on to earn five Oscar nominations, including best picture, and won original screenplay.

The rule change also offers cover for filmmakers working under difficult political circumstances. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” was never a feasible candidate for submission by Iran, given the director’s long-running conflicts with the government. It relied on France to step in as a third-country submitter. Germany did the same a year earlier for Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”

Two other 2026 titles are positioned to benefit from the same festival pathway. Berlin’s Golden Bear winner, “Yellow Letters,” directed by İlker Çatak and performed in Turkish, would not require submission by Germany or Turkey. Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner “Shame and Money,” an Albanian-language drama from Kosovan director Visar Morina with a co-production footprint spanning Germany, Kosovo, Slovenia, Albania, North Macedonia and Belgium, has the same protection.

For “Fjord,” this guarantees the film, at the very least, a place in the international feature conversation heading into the fall. Whether the nomination ultimately comes to fruition is up to the season.

“Fjord” is set to open in theaters on Oct. 9.