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Syrian prison documentary The Other Side of the Sun, directed by Tawfik Sabouni, has been selected as Syria’s submission for the best international feature film Oscar at the 99th Academy Awards.
The decision marks the country’s first entry since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Andana Films, which is handling worldwide sales to the film, also unveiled that Icarus Films has acquired U.S. rights to the film.
The international Oscar submission was decided by Syria’s newly formed committee accredited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), underscoring a new chapter in the country’s participation in the international awards landscape.
“The selection of The Other Side of the Sun comes within a distinctive cinematic and humanitarian context,” the country’s General Organisation for Cinema said. “The film explores the experience of imprisonment in Saydnaya Prison, one of the most prominent detention sites associated with Syria’s recent history and collective memory during the previous decades of rule. It does so through the experience of director Tawfik Sabouni, who was previously imprisoned there, alongside four other survivors of detention.”
For The Other Side of the Sun, which premiered at Berlin, director Sabouni returned to Saydnaya Prison with four fellow survivors to retrace the places and experiences that shaped their years of imprisonment. “Blending testimony with reenactment, the film gives tangible form to memories long confined to silence, capturing the enduring impact of incarceration in ways that spoken accounts alone cannot fully express,” press notes highlight. “As the country reassesses its recent past, cinema is playing an increasingly important role in documenting lived experiences, preserving collective memory, and ensuring that stories once kept from public view can finally be heard.”
Said Sabouni: “I am deeply happy and moved by this selection. This moment is the culmination of years of hard work, years during which I carried this film on my own, despite the doubts, the obstacles and the weight of such a responsibility. To see this project come to fruition today and find its place on such a stage is an immense personal and collective victory.”
He added: “But beyond the artistic journey, the true significance of this selection lies in the voice it gives to those whom others have sought to silence. The stories of the men and women who lost their lives in the prisons of the Assad regime will never be forgotten. Their memory, their suffering and their dignity will be forever etched in our minds and presented to the eyes of the world. It is to them, above all, that this selection belongs.”
Syria has never been nominated for the international Oscar.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil the 15 films on the best international feature film shortlist on Dec. 15. The five nominees will be announced Jan. 21, 2027. The 99th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 14, 2027.
English (US) ·