The National Center for Cinema (CNC) announced on Wednesday, September 11, that four films have been pre-selected to represent France at the Oscars in March 2025. The films are The Count of Monte Cristo, Emilia Pérez, All We Imagine as Light, and Miséricorde.

The selection committee will reconvene on September 18 to conduct auditions and ultimately choose “the film that will represent France in the race for the Oscar for Best International Film 2025,” according to a press release.

The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, has been a major hit in France, still showing in theaters after eleven weeks. This adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, starring Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantès, has surpassed eight million admissions, based on CBO Box-Office data released Wednesday.

Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Pérez won the Jury Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival and earned a collective Best Actress award for Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and transgender lead actress Karla Sofia Gascon.

The CNC also selected All We Imagine as Light, a social and feminist chronicle by young Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, which received the Grand Prix at Cannes and is notably a French production. The rural thriller Miséricorde, featuring Catherine Frot and Félix Kysyl, is Alain Guiraudie’s seventh feature film.

For the 2024 Oscars, France had proposed The Passion of Dodin Bouffant by Tran Anh Hung, which was not selected in the Best International Film category by the Academy. However, Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for Best Film by the Academy and won the award for Best Original Screenplay. Its co-producer is now part of the selection committee, which consists of eleven film professionals, equally divided between men and women, and chaired by Charles Tesson, former general delegate of Critics’ Week in Cannes.

Sayart / Kang In sig insig6622@naver.com