Tajikistan is again selecting “Melody” for the best international feature film race after missing the deadline last year

Tajikistan has selected the drama by Iranian director Behrouz Sebt Rasoul melody as a nominee for the “Best International Feature Film” category at the 97th Academy Awards.

It is the second time the Central Asian country has chosen the feature film to represent it in the Oscar race, after selecting the drama for the 96th edition but missing the deadline to deliver all the required material to the Academy.

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“It was submitted in time for the 97th Academy Awards,” Sebt Rasoul told Deadline via email.

Combining social drama and mysticism, the film offers a rare cinematic vision of rural life in the mountainous, landlocked country whose neighbors include Afghanistan and China.

Diman Zandi plays the eponymous Melody, who teaches music at a center for children with cancer. When her students ask her to compose a piece of music using the sounds of 30 birds, Melody travels back to her home village to capture their birdsong and enlists the help of a wise old singer who knows her whereabouts.

The film is produced by Sebt Rasoul’s Tehran-based Nama Film Company in collaboration with Tajik state broadcaster Safina. France-based Dreamlab Films is handling international sales and distribution.

melody is Tajikstan’s third Oscar submission after Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov’s comedy-drama Luna Papa i1999, which received no nomination, and the Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s romantic drama Sex & Philosophy in 2005, which was also disqualified because the print did not arrive at the academy on time.

The film had its world premiere at the International Film Festival of India in Goa late last year and has since screened at a number of festivals including Chennai in India, Keswick in London and China’s Silk Road International Film Festival in September, and is being screened at the Australian Cinémathèque in Brisbane, Australia in February 2025.

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