The 2025 Oscars race has begun. Ireland and Austria have submitted their contenders for the 2025 Academy Awards in the best international feature category.
For its Oscar contender, Austria has selected "The Devil’s Bath", Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s inspired-by-history feminist horror film.
On the other hand, Ireland has, unsurprisingly, gone for the craic, picking Rich Peppiatt’s cheeky doc-comedy Kneecap, about the real-life Belfast rappers of the title.
Franz and Fiala, known for their 2014 horror classic Goodnight Mommy and 2019’s "The Lodge", explore a dark corner of history with "The Devil’s Bath".
Set in 18th-century rural Austria, it is inspired by the documented cases of depressed people, mainly women, who, terrified of the eternal damnation promised them if they committed suicide, instead chose to commit murder, often killing children, a crime that would allow them to repent and seek absolution in confession before their execution.
The film premiered in Berlin and won a Silver Bear for cinematographer Martin Gschlacht. Shudder picked up "The Devil’s Bath" for North America ahead of its Berlin bow.
"Kneecap" follows a lightly fictionalized origin story for the band — made up of two working-class drug dealers (Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara) and a schoolteacher (DJ Provaí) — who rap mostly in Irish Gaelic and who combine Irish republican politics with raucous humor and a lot, a whole lot, of drugs.
Irish Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender co-stars in the semi-fictionalized film which premiered at Sundance. Sony Pictures Classics quickly snatched it up for domestic release.
The deadline for submissions for the 96th Oscars is November 14, 2024. The shortlist for best international feature contenders will be announced on December 17. Nominations will be announced January 17, 2025. The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2.
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