This is a list of submissions to the 62nd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was created in 1956 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honour non-English-speaking films produced outside the United States. The award is handed out annually, and is accepted by the winning film's director, although it is considered an award for the submitting country as a whole. Countries are invited by the Academy to submit their best films for competition according to strict rules, with only one film being accepted from each country.
For the 62nd Academy Awards, thirty-seven films were submitted in the category Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The bolded titles were the five nominated films, which came from Canada, Denmark, France, Puerto Rico and Italy. Burkina Faso and South Africa submitted films for the first time. Puerto Rico was nominated for the first, and as of 2025, only time.
Italy won for the eleventh time for Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore.
Submissions Submitting country Film title used in nomination Original title Language(s) Director(s) Result La Amiga Spanish, German Jeanine Meerapfel The Seventh Continent Der siebente Kontinent German Michael Haneke The Sacrament Het Sacrament Dutch Hugo Claus Better Days Ahead Dias Melhores Virão Brazilian Portuguese Carlos Diegues Time of Violence Време разделно Bulgarian Ludmil Staikov Yaaba Mooré Idrissa Ouedraogo Jesus of Montreal Jésus de Montréal French, English Denys Arcand The Birth of New China 开国大典 Mandarin Qiankuan Li Supporting Roles Papeles secundarios Spanish Orlando Rojas A Hoof Here, a Hoof There Kopytem sem, kopytem tam Czech Věra Chytilová Memories of a Marriage Dansen med Regitze Danish Kaspar Rostrup Camille Claudel French Bruno Nuytten Spider's Web Das Spinnenetz German Bernhard Wicki Landscape in the Mist Τοπίο στην ομίχλη Greek Theo Angelopoulos Painted Faces 七小福 Cantonese Alex Law My 20th Century Az Én XX. századom Hungarian Ildikó Enyedi Under the Glacier Kristnihald undir jökli Icelandic Guðný Halldórsdóttir Parinda परिंदा Hindi Vidhu Vinod Chopra Tjoet Nja' Dhien Indonesian, Acehnese, Dutch Eros Djarot One of Us אחד משלנו Hebrew Uri Barbash Cinema Paradiso Nuovo Cinema Paradiso Italian, English, Portuguese, Sicilian Giuseppe Tornatore Rikyu 利休 Japanese Hiroshi Teshigahara Polonaise Leedvermaak Dutch Frans Weisz A Handful of Time En håndfull tid Norwegian Martin Asphaug Kornblumenblau Polish Leszek Wosiewicz The Cannibals Os Canibais Portuguese Manoel de Oliveira Santiago, the Story of his New Life Lo que le pasó a Santiago Spanish Jacobo Morales Those Who Pay With Their Lives Cei care plătesc cu viaţa Romanian Șerban Marinescu Mapantsula Zulu, Afrikaans, Sesotho, English Oliver Schmitz Zerograd Город Зеро Russian Karen Shakhnazarov Love, Hate and Death Montoyas y Tarantos Spanish Vicente Escrivá The Women on the Roof Kvinnor på taket Swedish Carl-Gustav Nykvist My Dear Subject Mon cher sujet French Anne-Marie Miéville A City of Sadness 悲情城市 Taiwanese Hokkien, Mandarin, Japanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese Hou Hsiao-hsien The Elephant Keeper คนเลี้ยงช้าง Thai Chatrichalerm Yukol Don't Let Them Shoot the Kite Uçurtmayi Vurmasinlar Turkish Tunç Başaran Time of the Gypsies Дом за вешањеRomani, Serbo-Crroatian, Italian, English, German, Macedonian, Slovene Emir Kusturica
Notes
The South African submission, Mapantsula, was on the 1989 official AMPAS press release, but not on the 2007 updated list. In 1997, the AMPAS press release announced that Paljas had been selected as South Africa's first-ever submission.
References