The nine-member committee unanimously chose 'Cause of Death: Unknown' from among the five final contenders to represent Iran at the 2026 Oscars.
Iran has officially chosen Ali Zarnegar’s thriller Cause of Death: Unknown as its submission for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category.
Set in Iran’s vast Lut Desert, the film follows a group of travellers who face a tense moral dilemma after one of them dies unexpectedly during the night. When emergency services refuse to send help without a verified cause of death, the men search the body and discover a large sum of money but no identification. They are forced to decide whether to transport the body to a hospital or bury it and keep the cash.
Cause of Death: Unknown premiered at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2023, where it earned the Best Cinematography Award for Davood Malek Hosseini. Despite its critical recognition, the film has maintained a modest international profile and faces tough competition in the Oscar race.
Iran has previously earned three Oscar nominations in this category: Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1999) and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2012) and The Salesman (2017), both of which won. Most recently, Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig represented Germany and was nominated for the 2025 Oscars.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil the shortlist of 15 international films on December 16, 2025, followed by the final nominations on January 22, 2026. The 98th Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026.
