It wouldn’t be an exaggeration, by any means, to say that the year 2020 changed the world (for better or for worse). But other than Covid-19, something else happened too that shifted our perspectives culturally.

At the 92nd Academy Awards (or Oscars, as they are commonly known), South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho’s film Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the award for Best Picture and it was the first time that Asian writers won the Best Original Screenplay, while the film also bagged the awards for Best Director and Best International Feature Film.

That was five years ago. Now, in 2025, six other international feature films are creating buzz to be big Oscar winners in different categories — Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, No Other Land, Seed of the Sacred Fig, Black Box Diaries, and Flow. Two of these are running for the top prize (Best Film), a pattern that is being noted for the seventh year in a row. In fact, Emilia Pérez has bagged 13 nominations so far. The film is set in Mexico, shot near, is a Spanish-language film, and France’s official entry to the 97th Academy Awards.

However, the pattern is not exactly surprising. In the last few years, the Oscars have invited hundreds of people from different corners of the world to vote for the films in competition, clearly going international with its approach, after the #OscarsSoWhite movement in 2015 that had called out the exclusion in the international awards show.

But other than a lot of international films competing for the awards, there’s another interesting string tying many of the nominations together — the evident politics of these films or their stars. For instance, Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón is the first openly trans person to be nominated for Best Actress – critical at a time when United States President Donald Trump has “declared” that the country only “recognises” two sexes.

The other films in the running for Best Picture have interesting political themes too. Nickel Boys takes on racism, Conclave places together corruption and faith, I’m Still Here is set in a totalitarian regime, and at the heart of both Anora and The Substance are women and their struggles in a world that does not care about or cater to them.

In the other categories too, politics takes a front-seat. Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice — which Trump brushed away as a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” — is a biopic of him from his younger days in the real-estate field and has been nominated in two categories: Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

A lot of firsts are happening this time too. This is the first time that two musicals have been nominated for Best Picture (Emilia Pérez and Wicked); while The Substance is the first body horror in the shortlist for the top award. What’s not new, however, is the Academy Awards’ tryst with controversies — the actor’s voice in Emilia Pérez’s songs being AI-enhanced, actors’ accents in The Brutalist being fine-tuned using AI, the absence of intimacy coordinators on the sets of Anora, or the many old racist and Islamophobic tweets by Gascón that came to light.

What remains to be seen now is who scores big at the acclaimed global platform. The Oscars are set to happen on Sunday, March 2, 7 pm EST (March 3, 5:30 am India time); and will air live on ABC. American comedian Conan O’Brien will be hosting the award show, while Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Queen Latifah, Doja Cat, Raye, and Blackpink’s Lisa will be performing.