The award season is here! Which brings us to the most awaited night of the year – the Academy Awards.

This year, the weight was on feminism and women’s rights in the industry and being more inclusive of the art by advocating an all-encompassing view of filmmaking.

What was special about this Oscar?

By a comprehensive view of filmmaking, let’s address the elephant in the room – ‘Parasite.’ Directed by Bong Joon-ho, ‘Parasite’ is a satirical suspense thriller story of the class divide – the rich vs poor. There are two families – one up the ladder, the other at the bottom – who are split into parts based on materialism, yearning and envy. And the divide is depicted through the patriarchal servant culture between the north vs south Korea. Every frame of the movie is an example of intelligent filmmaking on a subject overflowing with division, but its director completely controls the perspective.

The film won five Oscars out of six nominations in the category of the best picture, best director, best foreign-language film, best production design, best film editing and best international feature.

Talking about exclusion, Oscars have modified a particular category which was earlier the “Best Foreign Language Film”. But last year, the category was renamed to “Best International Feature” to make it more inclusive of the films globally instead of addressing it any different, which is refreshing from accrediting English-language film as best in global art.

Apart from the school of cinema itself which is ‘Parasite’, another film which had a lot of crowning moment in the night is Todd Philip’s ‘Joker’. The film was nominated for eleven categories; best actor, best original music score, best picture, best director, best-adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best sound mixing, best costume design, best film editing, best makeup and hairstyling and best sound editing.

The film won two amongst them; Joquin Phoenix for best actor and Hildur Guonadottir for best original music score.

It was followed by Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ which got ten nominations and won two; Brad Pitt for best-supporting actor and best production design.

Another highlight of the night was Natalie Portman’s dress for the Oscars red carpet with her Dior Cape embroidered names of female directors who were not nominated for the Oscars in 2020. Earlier, the ceremony was highly criticized for not nominating female directors – which is lamentably a frequent occurrence.

History was made as Taika Waititi of Maori descent became the first aboriginal person to bag an Academy Award. He won for the best-adapted screenplay for Jojo Rabbit.

The best actress was given to Renee Zellweger for Judy, a film based on the life of the American singer Judy Garland.

Further, what was the most refreshing change in the Award night was no one film dominated the nominations or winning list.

And the best memorable moment is when the man of the night Bong Joon Ho said in his speech ‘The most personal is the most creative’. Pretty much sums up everything that art consists of.