Venezuela has announced the selection of Death Has No Master / La muerte no tiene dueño, written and directed by Jorge Thielen Armand and starring Italian actress and filmmaker Asia Argento, as its official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
Thielen Armand’s third feature following La Soledad (2016) and La Fortaleza (2020) is a bold and atmospheric thriller that had its world premiere earlier this year at the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival. It also screened at the Locarno Film Festival and had its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, followed by its East Coast Premiere at the AFI Latin American Film Festival in a few days.
Also starring Dogreika Tovar, Yermain Sequera, Jorge Thielen Hedderich, Arturo Rodríguez, and Jericó Montilla, Death Has No Master follows Caro, a woman who returns to Venezuela after years abroad to sell the cacao plantation she has inherited following her father’s death. Upon arriving, she discovers that the decaying family mansion is occupied by its former workers, who have no intention of leaving. As Caro attempts to reclaim the property, the confrontation escalates into a violent struggle that brings the land’s colonial past and buried memories to the surface.
The film continues Thielen Armand’s exploration of home, displacement, property, and the complicated relationship between personal memory and contemporary Venezuela. While his earlier films frequently blurred the boundaries between fiction and documentary, Death Has No Master moves more explicitly into psychological thriller and genre territory. The filmmaker has described the film as a nightmarish encounter between its protagonist and the country to which she returns.
Born in Caracas in 1990 and based in Canada, Thielen Armand made his feature debut with La Soledad, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, followed by La Fortaleza, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His short film Pasta Negra, adapted from a story by Venezuelan writer Karina Sainz Borgo, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025.
Venezuela has participated in the Academy Awards’ international film race since 1977, when it submitted Román Chalbaud’s El pez que fuma. The country has yet to earn a nomination in the category, although Alberto Arvelo’s historical epic The Liberator / Libertador, starring Édgar Ramírez, came close in 2014, advancing to the nine-film shortlist for the 87th Academy Awards.
