Minecraft Shapes Germany's Official Oscar Submission Everytime
Sandra Wollner's award-winning drama Everytime uses a shared Minecraft world to explore loss, standing as Germany's entry for the 99th Academy Awards.
9Minecraft Team
While Hollywood pushes its own blockbuster adaptation toward awards voters, an independent European drama has quietly placed Minecraft at the centre of the prestige film conversation. Everytime, directed by Sandra Wollner, has been selected as Germany's official submission for the 99th Oscars in the International Feature Film category, using a shared sandbox world as its emotional core.
How Everytime Turns a Minecraft World into a Time Capsule
As detailed by Yahoo, Everytime is neither a loud comedic adaptation nor a story set entirely inside a digital realm. Instead, Sandra Wollner uses the lasting alterations a single player leaves behind in a Minecraft world as a quiet metaphor for how a person shapes the lives of those around them even after death.
The story begins with a sudden accident in Berlin that claims the life of a 17-year-old girl named Jessie, played by Carla Hüttermann. Left behind are her mother Ella (Birgit Minichmayr), her younger sister Melli (Lotte Shirin Keiling), and her ex-boyfriend Lux (Tristán López), who is blamed for the tragedy. Alongside modern digital remnants like text histories and voice notes, the grieving pair of Melli and Lux reconnect a year later by shutting themselves in Jessie's old bedroom and loading up her personal Minecraft world.
Wandering through her untouched creations allows them to experience her thoughts frozen in time, turning the concept of a personal game instance into something deeply intimate. During one session, their in-game character slips while climbing a hillside, clipping straight through the terrain into an empty, glitchy void underneath the map that Yahoo compares to an unsettling vision of the afterlife.
In the film's third act, the boundaries between the game and reality begin to dissolve during an impromptu trip from Berlin to a beach resort on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Shot by Aftersun cinematographer Gregory Oke and backed by an electronic, harp-like score from David Schweighart, the family becomes trapped in an endless sunset. Panicked holidaymakers around them soon notice why time has stalled: the sun hanging over the horizon has turned into a giant Minecraft cube, broken free from the server to light a world that refuses to move on.
Festival Acclaim and the Road to the 99th Oscars
According to Deadline and Newsworm.de, an independent jury convened by German Films chose Everytime from 11 submitted entries. It is Wollner's third feature film and was produced as a German-Austrian co-production by The Barricades and ZDF alongside Austria's Panama Film, with funding from the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM).
Wollner manages to make grief feel physical through purely cinematic craft, blending memory, the present, and imagination into a poetic experience where a world is knocked out of joint.
German Films Jury Statement
Before earning its Oscar ticket, Everytime debuted in May 2026 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it captured the Prix Un Certain Regard, the sidebar's highest honour. It went on to screen in Sydney, Karlovy Vary, New Zealand, and Melbourne, picked up the Heart of Sarajevo Grand Prize, and lined up North American appearances at the Toronto and New York film festivals. Following recent Academy rule changes that allow major festival winners to qualify independently, two other German productions—İlker Çatak's Berlin Golden Bear winner Yellow Letters and Visar Morina's Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Shame and Money—also qualified for the race.
Everytime premieres at the Cannes Film Festival and wins the Prix Un Certain Regard.
German distributor eksystent filmverleih Kijas releases Everytime in German cinemas.
The Academy publishes the full list of International Feature Film submissions.
The 15-film shortlist for the category is announced.
The final 5 Oscar nominees are officially revealed.
The 99th Academy Awards ceremony takes place.
While Charades handles international sales for Everytime, distributor 1-2 Special plans to bring the drama to North American cinemas in early 2027.
Hollywood's Blockbuster Push and A Minecraft Movie Squared
The arthouse success of Everytime stands in sharp contrast to Warner Bros.' commercial juggernaut, A Minecraft Movie. As documented by Wikipedia and Attractmo.de, director Jared Hess's live-action adventure starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black grossed roughly $961 million worldwide after its April 4, 2025 launch, fuelled in part by viral theatre moments like the Chicken Jockey trend. Warner Bros. even mounted an ambitious awards campaign for the blockbuster, pitching it for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Jack Black, and multiple technical categories.
Everytime (2026)
- Directed by Sandra Wollner as a melancholic German-Austrian arthouse drama.
- Uses a late teenager's personal Minecraft world and a cubic sun as metaphors for grief.
- Won the top prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and represents Germany at the 99th Oscars.
A Minecraft Movie (2025)
- Directed by Jared Hess as a big-budget Warner Bros. adventure comedy.
- Follows four misfits pulled into the Overworld alongside Steve (Jack Black) to stop Malgosha.
- Grossed $961 million globally and spawned a sequel arriving July 23, 2027.
Meanwhile, Mojang is already involving players directly in the blockbuster's sequel, A Minecraft Movie Squared, which is set to hit cinemas on July 23, 2027. On July 10, 2026, Mojang announced the results of the Minecraft Movie Build Challenge, which drew more than 21,000 builders—the largest community build competition in the game's history.
The Grand Prize went to Francisco C.M. for the Lightning Rod Lighthouse, a tundra structure built atop a foundation of ice. Because judges and the filmmakers loved the submissions so much, Mojang confirmed that all finalist builds will appear either in A Minecraft Movie Squared or its end credits. After players pointed out that finalist Ben V.'s Tree Village Build accidentally used blocks from multiple biomes, Mojang removed it from the grand prize tally for fairness, promoted the semifinalist Tranquil Taiga Tower into the finals, and kept Tree Village as an Honorable Mention that will still appear in the film.
How Players and Film Fans Are Reacting
Across community discussions and video commentary, players have been deeply moved by the premise of Everytime. Many longtime fans relate strongly to the idea of logging into an old server or single-player world built with a friend or family member who is no longer around, noting that untouched chests, half-finished houses, and signs feel like genuine digital memorials. Several commentators praised Sandra Wollner for treating Minecraft as a sincere emotional language for young people rather than a punchline.
At the same time, the contrast between Everytime and Warner Bros.' awards push for A Minecraft Movie has sparked plenty of light-hearted debate. While many players are thrilled to see 21,000+ community builders celebrated in A Minecraft Movie Squared, critics and viewers remain sceptical of a live-action comedy about Chicken Jockeys competing for major Academy Awards, arguing that Everytime shows how the game's quiet, solitary atmosphere translates far more naturally to prestige cinema.
If reading about these worlds makes you want to revisit your own long-standing saves or start a new build, you can grab the latest versions of the game right from our Android, iOS, Windows, patched and Java Edition download pages, including Bedrock builds for Android APK, iOS, Windows GDK, and patched releases, or check the 9Minecraft wiki for Java Edition. Always remember to make a fresh backup of your important worlds before loading them in a newer version, especially if a save holds years of memories.
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