The United Kingdom has selected Rehearsals for a Revolution, the debut feature from Iranian filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani, as its official submission for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. A selection committee made up of members of BAFTA’s film committee chose the film. It is a documentary made in the U.K. that won the L’Oeil d’or, Cannes’ top documentary prize, earlier this year.
The film traces more than four decades of Iran’s history through Ahangarani’s own experience of exile and the lives of her relatives and mentors. It is built from five portraits of loved ones, each one an expression of resistance, and the chapters correspond to periods of her own life and moments in Iranian history. She draws on personal archives, home videos, newspaper clippings, recorded voices and footage of street protests, including phone footage from the 2009 Green Wave protests and clips from her father’s old films. The film ends with her newborn daughter, whom she has said “represents hope.” Ahangarani has said the title reflects her acting background, since the word “rehearsal” echoes art and cinema.
Ahangarani was born in 1984 to filmmakers Manijeh Hekmat and Jamshid Ahangarani and began acting at the age of seven. She became a prominent actress in Iran, with around 40 films to her name. She was arrested twice for taking part in anti-government protests, and the Cannes Film Festival notes she was sentenced to eighteen months in prison in 2013. She now lives in London, where she decided to focus on documentary filmmaking.
The film has had a strong festival run. It premiered in Cannes‘ Special Screenings section and won the L’Oeil d’or across all of the festival’s sections. Accepting the prize, Ahangarani dedicated it to the people of Iran, saying “I want these struggles to be seen as much as possible.” The film then played at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, where Sony Pictures Classics says it drew standing ovations. It was also honored with an Albie Award from the Maysles Documentary Center. Reviews have been warm. Variety headlined its review “A Perceptive, Poignant Chronicle of Great Hopes and Even Greater Disappointments,” and Screen Daily called it a “timely, moving documentary.”
Sony Pictures Classics welcomed the selection, saying the film is marking a significant moment for “a formidable female filmmaker creating in exile from her home country.” The company also said the Best International Feature category has the potential to be transformative for the film by opening doors to audiences around the world and putting a spotlight on Ahangarani’s voice.
The film was released in the U.K. and Ireland on September 25. In the U.S., Sony Pictures Classics will hold Oscar-qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles in December. It will then open exclusively at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles and Film Forum in New York on January 8, 2027, ahead of a national rollout in the following weeks.
The selection gives the film a second path to awards. According to IndieWire, Sony Pictures Classics had positioned it as a major contender in the Best Documentary race, so it now has a chance at nominations in both categories. The International Feature race may be harder, because the pool of contenders is wider. The Academy will announce its 15-film shortlist for the category in December.
It is not the first time the U.K. has gone with a Persian-language film. In 2022 the country submitted Hassan Nazer’s drama Winners, a pick that showed the range of films the U.K. can put forward in the category.
With a Cannes win, a strong festival run and now an Oscar submission, Rehearsals for a Revolution heads into awards season as one of the year’s most closely watched documentaries.
