The U.K. has tapped Pegah Ahangarani's Rehearsals for a Revolution — winner of the L'Oeil d'Or for best documentary at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival — as its submission for the best international feature film Oscar at the 99th Academy Awards on March 14, 2027.

The 42-year-old director wrote, researched and edited the film in the U.K. over more than two and a half years, drawing on personal archives, home videos, street-protest footage, newspapers and recorded voices to trace over 40 years of Iranian history.

Sony Pictures Classics will run qualifying dates in New York and Los Angeles in December before opening the film exclusively at Landmark's Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles and Film Forum in New York on Jan. 8, 2027, with wider U.S. release to follow.

What changes with this submission?

The submission slots Rehearsals for a Revolution into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 15-film shortlist due Dec. 15, 2026, with five nominees announced Jan. 21, 2027. Norway's Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier and starring Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, took the category at the 98th Academy Awards, leaving the field open for 2027.

The film previously played the Cannes special screenings section, Telluride and the Toronto International Film Festival, and released in the U.K. in September.

Why this film, and why now?

Ahangarani frames the documentary through her own exile and the stories of relatives and mentors, building a portrait shaped by political repression and a continuing hope for revolution. Selection in the international feature category — rather than best documentary — signals the U.K. is banking on Academy voters who typically engage with fiction-leaning international titles.

Sony Pictures Classics pushed the choice in a statement: "This selection in the best international feature category has the potential to be truly transformative for the film, opening doors to audiences around the world while shining a spotlight on Pegah's extraordinary talent and her vital voice."

The distributor added that recognition "will have a lasting impact not only on the life of this film, but on Pegah's future career as a filmmaker."

What the mechanics favor — and what they don't

Three notes worth flagging:

• The film is already a Cannes L'Oeil d'Or winner, a credential that travels inside the documentary community but carries no automatic weight in the international feature branch, where voters prioritize dramatic storytelling and cultural specificity.
• Ahangarani made the film in the U.K. with British collaborators, satisfying the Academy's country-of-origin rule; the U.K. selection committee has used this pathway before.
• Sony Pictures Classics' qualifying-run strategy (NY/LA in December, theatrical Jan. 8) compresses the campaign into the six-week window between shortlist announcement and nomination voting.

What does this change for the international feature race?

The pick gives the U.K. its first submission backed by a Cannes documentary prize since the submission rules were last revised, and it puts Sony Pictures Classics in the unusual position of pairing a stateside specialty release with an international-feature campaign.

It also moves Ahangarani — still early in her feature-directing career — into a category whose recent winners have included veteran directors with multi-decade track records.

Whether Academy voters reward a personal-exile documentary over more conventional narrative entries from the 92 other countries expected to submit will become clearer once the shortlist lands on Dec. 15.