Switzerland has officially submitted Who Is Still Alive for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, adding a 2025 documentary to its long Oscar history. Directed by Nicolas Wadimoff, the 113-minute film follows nine Palestinian refugees, bringing their experiences into a race that has already produced two Swiss Oscar winners and five official nominations.

The selection puts Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary back in the spotlight, with Switzerland once again hoping to turn an international submission into an Academy Award nomination.

Switzerland has officially entered Nicolas Wadimoff’s Who Is Still Alive into the Best International Feature Film race at the 99th Academy Awards, as per the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. The 2025 documentary follows nine Palestinian refugees who escaped the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Its Oscar submission gives Wadimoff’s latest exploration of Palestinian experiences a significant international platform.

The 113-minute documentary takes an unusual approach to its subjects’ memories, with the nine refugees recreating their former neighborhoods entirely from recollection. Filming took place in South Africa, partly because the country is among the few places allowing Palestinians from Gaza to enter without a visa. The production therefore carries a distinctive story of its own.

The announcement by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture comes after Who Is Still Alive premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival as part of the Giornate degli Autori sidebar before screening at other documentary showcases. The film also continues Nicolas Wadimoff’s long-standing engagement with Palestinian stories, following Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza) and The Apollo of Gaza. Switzerland’s selection now places the documentary in the wider international Oscar conversation.

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With questions of representation increasingly surrounding the Oscars, films like Who Is Still Alive invite a closer look at how stories from underrepresented communities have fared at the Academy.

Documentaries rarely advance through the Best International Feature Film race, but several notable exceptions show that nonfiction films can overcome that barrier. Honeyland became the first documentary nominated in both Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film, followed by Collective and Flee, which also achieved recognition across multiple Academy categories.

Films addressing conflict and humanitarian crises have also found an audience within the Academy. No Other Land won Best Documentary Feature, while The Voice of Hind Rajab earned a Best International Feature Film nomination. Meanwhile, 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers demonstrated the documentary branch’s interest Palestinian stories, leaving Who Is Still Alive with an intriguing precedent to follow.

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