RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, and recognised for best picture and best adapted screenplay, doesn’t feel like a standard period drama, thanks to its bold use of first-person perspective, but its subject is the US’s racist past – and how that past reverberates into the present day. Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, which has nods for star Colman Domingo and adapted screenplay, too, tells the true story of a theatre group for incarcerated men. It doesn’t mention racism at all, but almost all of its characters are black and working class, which says a lot about the reality of US prisons: data published by the Pew Research Center in 2020 showed that at the end of 2018, there were 2,272 prison inmates per 100,000 black men, compared to 392 inmates per 100,000 white men.
Even Dune: Part 2 – nominated for five awards, including best picture – is knottier on the subjects of religion and leadership than the average science-fiction blockbuster. In most years, one or two overtly political films are nominated for Oscars, such as anti-capitalist satire Triangle of Sadness in 2023 and in 2024, Martin Scorsese’s dark reckoning with the exploitation of Native Americans, Killers of the Flower Moon. In 2025, such films are the rule rather than the exception.
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The question now is whether these political nominations will translate into a political awards ceremony. Traditionally, Oscar acceptance speeches shy away from anything more contentious than asking for more diversity on film sets, as Frances McDormand did when she accepted her best actress award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2018. And when Oscar winners do allude to US politics, they can get a mixed reception, as Michael Moore did when he criticised George W Bush during his acceptance speech for Bowling for Columbine, the 2003 winner of the best documentary prize. But this year feels as if it could be different. The most thrilling part of March’s ceremony might not be seeing who wins, but hearing what they say when they do.
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