How Political Will the Oscars Be? |
Did you hear those bells tolling all through Hollywood at 5 p.m. yesterday? That marked the end of Oscar voting.
I’m Rebecca Ford, and now that all the ballots have been cast, we wait with bated breath till March 15. As we mentioned in our final predictions, many of this year’s races (especially the acting ones) are really up in the air.
What also remains to be seen is how political this year’s broadcast will be. The unsettling conflict in Iran has been weighing heavily on everyone’s mind, and it’s likely that it will make its way into the Oscar ceremony in some shape or form. This year there are several nominees who have ties to Iran—like Jafar Panahi, whose film It Was Just an Accident is nominated for best international feature and original screenplay. Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, directors of the Oscar-nominated documentary Cutting Through Rocks, told Vanity Fair that their “hearts are in two places. We are proud to represent the people of Iran with the first independently made Iranian documentary nominated for an Academy Award, yet we are grieving for our people who are under severe pressure.”
Khaki and Eyni also told me they hope that people at the show will “speak out about what is happening in Iran and be on the side of the people of Iran.” But as I noted in my piece about politics at the Oscars, when filmmakers speak out about contentious issues at the ceremony, their words can be met with a mixed or even negative response. Remember Michael Moore in 2003? He received more than his fair share of boos while onstage before being played off. And in 2024, Jonathan Glazer received quite a bit of blowback after speaking about Gaza in his acceptance speech.
We’ve seen political pins make their way down the red carpet at almost every event this year, bearing messages from “Be Good” to “ICE Out,” so I would bet on several celebrities choosing to get their message across in that way. But we’ll have to wait and see if anyone uses their moment onstage to make a bigger statement, or if they just keep the focus on their art—even though the two are often inextricably linked. |
