Disclaimer: not all films mentioned are right for all audiences. View with care.

Ahh, the Oscars. Although I would consider myself a viewer, I never put much stock into their significance until this year.  

The Oscars, also known as the Academy Awards, are held annually to celebrate achievement in film. This year, on March 10 at 6 p.m. CDT, Oscar recipients will win in categories spanning from Actress in a Leading Role to Best Sound Editing. Historically, the Oscars have also been denoted as a predominantly white institution in which white entertainers received the majority of the accolades, thus birthing the social campaign #oscarssowhite. However, this year is a step in the right direction in terms of diversity. 

This year, Lily Gladstone became the fourth Native American nominee for Best Actress in Oscar history, America Ferrera became the first-ever nominee of Honduran descent across all Oscar categories, and three female directors – Greta Gerwig, Justine Triet and Celine Song – have films nominated for Best Picture for the first time. Overall, the nominees and films nominated were more widely diverse and representative of the world as we know it. 

This was the inaugural year of the Academy’s implementation of inclusion and representation standards, and four of the eleven films nominated for Best Picture are partially non-English, the majority of the nominees in the Best Supporting Actress category are women of color, 19% of women nominated are women of color, and overall, women make up 33% of the nominees. 

Now that I feel as if the Oscars seem more worthy of watching, and my general film interest has also been spurred by one Virginia Skipworth, I have decided to take it upon myself to predict the winners of the Oscars.