<\/p>\n
(Chloe Zola \/ For The Times)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The Oscars\u2019 international feature class of 2026 includes sweeping epics, intense thrillers, black comedies and haunting dramas, but three submissions put young female performers at the forefront. Their stars, from Iraq, Chile and Argentina, are also first-time or relatively unknown actors. And their captivating performances demonstrate the wealth of on-screen talent hidden in all corners of the world.<\/p>\n For almost 20 years, Iraqi schoolchildren lived in fear over the birthday of Saddam Hussein. The celebrations required that one student, selected randomly, bake a cake in honor of the nation\u2019s authoritarian ruler \u2014 a task requiring time and resources prohibitive to much of the population. For filmmaker Hasan Hadi, it\u2019s an experience that haunts him to this day.<\/p>\n \u201cOne year I was picked as a flower boy. Flowers were much easier because usually teachers don’t really care about them because they’re not edible,\u201d Hadi explains. \u201cBut the thing is, my friend was picked for the birthday cake, and he couldn’t make it. And his fate totally changed. He got recruited to Saddam’s children army. He was expelled from the school. And I feel like it was kind of chasing me. This survival guilt. What if it was me?\u201d<\/p>\n Hadi\u2019s feature directorial debut, \u201cCake\u201d follows Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef), a 9-year-old living with her grandmother in Iraq\u2019s Mesopotamian Marshes. Lamia\u2019s life is turned upside down as she faces one obstacle after another to bake the cake. As with almost the entire cast, Nayef was a first-time actor, and Hadi was admittedly nervous as they were coming down to the wire in casting the role.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day, my friend recorded a couple of kids on the street, and she was one of them,\u201d Hadi recalls. \u201cIt was a 30-second video. She says her name, her class or school. And I immediately felt like, \u2018OK, this is the kid I think can hold the film together.\u2019 I called the parents, and they were against it. They refused to do anything with the film.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, despite their fears over how their daughter would be judged by Iraqi society, Hadi convinced Nayef\u2019s parents to relent and let her participate. Months later, the entire family attended the Cannes Film Festival, where \u201cCake\u201d took the Audience Award in the Director\u2019s Fortnight sidebar, partially thanks to her captivating performance.<\/p>\n \u201cI really hope she continues acting,\u201d Hadi says. \u201cI really think she can be one of those stars that can give birth to so many films in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n To bring his imaginative melodrama set in a fictional Chilean mining town to life, Diego C\u00e9spedes was on the hunt for a cabaret of standout queer drag performers. The young director worked closely with the community, auditioning nonprofessional and professional actors, but admits \u201cit was a really hard job\u201d that took a year and a half. The priority, however, was casting 11-year-old Lidia, a young girl whose future comes undone as a \u201cplague,\u201d the AIDS crisis, envelops everyone around her. C\u00e9spedes found his Lidia in newcomer Tamara Cort\u00e9s.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cast a lot of girls, but Tamara was right, and she had the attitude,\u201d C\u00e9spedes recalls. \u201cShe was super funny and, the most important thing, she didn’t have any prejudices with the girls of the canteen. They were just people for her. And now, they’re all close people to her. They’re family for her too.\u201d<\/p>\n C\u00e9spedes admits that not all of the younger actors understood what they were getting into, and reveals that one young actor\u2019s parents ultimately ended his involvement as a result of their homophobia and transphobia: \u201cThey didn’t say [it to us] but we heard a conversation about them, and they took the boy out of the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n That experience was more than assuaged by Cort\u00e9s and by the presence of magnificent trans actress Paula Dinamarca, who portrays the clan\u2019s seen-it-all matriarch, Madame Boa. Dinamarca had appeared in several documentary projects, and C\u00e9spedes initially recruited her for a short film a few years ago. He recalls, \u201cI told her, \u2018I want you back. I want you to do a real character, fictional.\u2019 She’s super talented. And we did that short and she started to get calls for everything. And with this feature film, they are calling her a lot now because she’s a natural.\u201d<\/p>\n As abortion rights have receded in the United States, they have been on the march in South America. In 2021, the Argentine government legalized the procedure for the first time and dropped all criminal charges against women accused of having them. But there were many battles to cross this threshold, most recently surrounding the horrifying case of Bel\u00e9n (a pseudonym), a young woman who spent three years in jail after suffering a miscarriage in the conservative province of Tucum\u00e1n. Her conviction was eventually overturned thanks to the crusading efforts of lawyer Soledad Deza, a tale chronicled in Dolores Fonzi\u2019s appropriately titled \u201cBel\u00e9n.\u201d<\/p>\n In the wrong hands, the story could have ended up as a sensationalized movie-of-the-week. Instead, Fonzi, who also portrays Deza on screen, crafts a captivating and powerful drama that transcends the genre. Her most important decision was casting the title role. She found her Bel\u00e9n, Camila Plaate, in a documentary set in the same prison her subject was incarcerated in.<\/p>\n \u201cThe [reenactment sequences in] the documentary were with these two girls, Camila Plaate and Ruth Plaate, who play Bel\u00e9n and her sister and who are sisters in real life,\u201d Fonzi reveals. \u201cSo, I knew these two actresses from Tucum\u00e1n were going to be those actresses in my movie.\u201d<\/p>\n Winner of the best supporting actress prize at the 2025 San Sebastian Film Festival, Fonzi says Plaate was \u201camazing since minute one.\u201d She adds, \u201cI got a crush on her and on her sister, they’re very strong women, Tucum\u00e1n artists. Tucum\u00e1n is a very conservative town, and they are the resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n As for any fears that current firebrand Argentine President Javier Milei and his La Libertad Avanza party could overturn the relatively new law, Fonzi believes attempting to do so would be \u201cpolitical suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe got 6 million people in the streets to make the law happen,\u201d Fonzi says. \u201cHe’s crazy. Nothing would surprise me, but I don’t think he would enter in that cave.\u201d<\/p>\n\u2018The President\u2019s Cake\u2019<\/b><\/h2>\n
\u2018The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo\u2019<\/b><\/h2>\n
\u2018Bel\u00e9n\u2019<\/b><\/h2>\n