Bhutan is among the one hundred countries that have submitted films for consideration for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, making their first submission in 1999. The Foreign Language Film award is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains primarily non-English dialogue.
As of 2025, Bhutan has been nominated once for Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2021).
Submissions The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film since 1956. The International Feature Film Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award.
The country's first submission The Cup (1999) was directed by , and followed the novice monks who desperately try to obtain a television for their remote Himalayan monastery to watch the 1998 FIFA World Cup final.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019), directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji, was initially submitted for the 93rd Academy Awards but was disqualified. It was resubmitted for the 94th Academy Awards, and was nominated, marking the country first nomination.
Dorji's The Monk and the Gun (2023) advanced to the December shortlists, but was not nominated.
Below is a list of the films that Bhutan has submitted for review by the Academy for the award by year and the respective Academy Awards ceremony.
Year(Ceremony) Film title used in nomination Original title Language(s) Director Result 1999(72nd) The Cup ཕོར་པ།Dolpali, Hindi, Tibetan 2020(93rd) Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom ལུང་ནག་ནDzongkha, English Pawo Choyning Dorji 2021(94th) 2023(96th)The Monk and the Gun 2025(98th) I, the Song མོ་གི་གསང་བའི་ཞབས་ཁྲ Dzongkha Dechen Roder
See also List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best International Feature Film List of Academy Award-winning foreign language films
Notes
References
External links The Official Academy Awards Database The Motion Picture Credits Database IMDb Academy Awards Page