Dolores Fonzi’s Belén will be Argentina’s submission in this year’s Academy Awards and the Spanish Goya Awards, the Argentine Academy of Film Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday. 

The announcement was made by actress Graciela Borges in an event at Casa de la Cultura, hosted by comedian and actor Peto Menahem. 

Fonzi’s second film, which is currently playing in the official competition of the San Sebastián film festival, was picked over three other candidates for the Oscar submission: Hernan Roselli’s Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Benjamín Ávila’s La mujer de la fila, and Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s Homo Argentum. 

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Produced by K&S Films (The Eternaut) and distributed by Amazon MGM, Belén is based on the true story of a judicial case that became a landmark in the pro-choice and feminist movements that fought for women’s rights and against gender-based violence.

In 2014, a young woman in Tucumán went to an emergency room seeking treatment for intense abdominal pain from a miscarriage she wasn’t even aware she was having, and was later arrested by police. Given that abortion in Argentina was illegal at the time, she was charged with, and later convicted of, first-degree murder.

The Tucumán Supreme Court finally absolved the 27-year-old after she spent two years in pre-trial detention. She received the support of dozens of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the UN’s Human Rights Committee.

Belén premiered in theaters in Argentina on September 18, selling more than 25,000 tickets in its first week, and will be available for streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.

A short list of 15 pre-selected films for the international feature category of the Oscars will be announced on December 16. The final nominations will be announced on January 22, 2026. The last time an Argentine film was nominated for an Oscar in that category was in 2023, when Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985 lost against Germany’s All Quiet in the Western Front.