Sandra Hüller’s climb in the Best Actress race could help international films make Oscar history.
The German star has moved up to No. 5 in Gold Derby’s Oscar odds for Rose. In Markus Schleinzer’s 17th century drama, she plays a soldier who survives the Thirty Years’ War and tries to rejoin society by passing as a man. The role has already won her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at Berlin, and it has her leading the Best Drama Actress race in Gold Derby’s Golden Globe odds ahead of the film’s Dec. 11 release.
Best Film Drama Actress
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Virginie Efira
All of a Sudden
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Ruth Madeley
Being Heumann
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Emily Blunt
Disclosure Day
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Jeon Do-yeon
Possible Love
The two women right behind her at the Globes are the same two flanking her in the Oscar race. Virginie Efira ranks No. 4 for All of a Sudden, the latest from Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. She plays the head of a nursing home outside Paris who forms a deep bond with a Japanese theater director battling cancer (Tao Okamoto). The two shared the Best Actress prize at Cannes.
Renate Reinsve sits at No. 6 for Fjord, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner and Romania’s Oscar submission. She and Sebastian Stan play a couple who move their five kids to a remote Norwegian village, where they’re accused of child abuse. Reinsve is chasing her second straight nomination after Sentimental Value last year.
If all three make the Oscar lineup, it would be the first time Best Actress has included three stars of international films. Two has happened three times. Anouk Aimée (A Man and a Woman) and Ida Kamińska (The Shop on Main Street) did it in 1967, and Liv Ullmann (Face to Face) and Marie-Christine Barrault (Cousin Cousine) followed in 1977. It then took 48 years for Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) to match them in 2025. [In 1976, Isabelle Adjani (The Story of Adele H.) was nominated alongside Carol Kane, who spoke mostly Yiddish in Hester Street, but that was an American film.]
Hüller could even do some of the work herself. The Academy now allows a performer to be nominated twice in the same category, and her other lead contender, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, ranks No. 8.
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Jeon Do-yeon is another name to watch. She ranks No. 11 at the Oscars and No. 6 at the Globes for Possible Love, Lee Chang-dong’s drama and South Korea’s Oscar entry. She plays a factory worker holding her family together after her husband loses his job, until a wealthy couple (with a camera) enters their lives. The film is in select theaters now and hits Netflix Nov. 6, so she has room to climb as more people see it. A nomination would make her the first South Korean actress nominated for Best Actress.
Breaking the record would still take an upset. Julianne Moore (The Debut), Olivia Wilde (The Invite), and Inde Navarrette (Obsession) hold the top three Oscar spots, and one of them would have to fall out. At the Globes, though, all three are competing in Comedy/Musical Actress, where they rank 1-2-3. That leaves the Drama side to the international contenders, whose films also all rank in the top five for Best Non-English Film.
