UK Selects ‘Rehearsals for a Revolution’ for Oscars

Rehearsals for a Revolution, filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani’s documentary about exile, memory and resistance, has been selected as the United Kingdom’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards.

The choice puts an intimate, politically charged nonfiction film into the international Oscar race. It is important to keep the distinction clear: the film is now the U.K.’s official entry, not yet an Academy Award nominee. The Academy will narrow the field before announcing the final nominees.

What ‘Rehearsals for a Revolution’ explores

Written and directed by Ahangarani, the film builds its story through five portraits of relatives and mentors. Those personal accounts become a wider reflection on resistance and on the filmmaker’s experience of rebuilding a life and creative practice in London.

The documentary draws on family archives, home movies, street-protest footage, newspapers and recorded voices to trace more than four decades of Iranian history. Its approach connects private memories with the larger forces that shaped the lives of Ahangarani and the people closest to her.

The film’s U.K. connection is more than administrative. London served as the base where Ahangarani wrote the project, making the British submission a reflection of both the director’s Iranian perspective and her work in exile.

A documentary already building momentum

Rehearsals for a Revolution arrives in the Oscar race with festival recognition. Sony Pictures Classics lists it as the winner of the L’Oeil d’Or, the Golden Eye prize for best documentary, at the Cannes Film Festival. The distributor also lists selections at the Telluride and Toronto international film festivals.

Sony Pictures Classics plans to open the film in select cities on January 8, 2027. That release will give more viewers a chance to encounter Ahangarani’s blend of personal testimony, archival material and political history while the awards campaign develops.

For now, the selection gives the film a significant platform, but the next Academy stage remains competitive. The official submission is the start of the Oscar process rather than its conclusion.