Most Diverse Oscar Nominations Ever

Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) has been nominated for four awards this year, the best picture, best adapted screenplay, best editing and last but not the least, best director. If she wins them all, she will set a record to have won several awards the very same night like Walt Disney in 1954 who had won four Academy Awards the same night.

Viola Davis, has been shortlisted in the Best Actress category for her role in the 1920s blue singer in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Judas and the Black Messiah, is an all-black producing team comprising Shaka King, Charles D. King, and Ryan Coogler. Also, for the first time, three black actors, namely Daniel Kaluuya, Lesile Odom Jr. and LaKeith Stanfield are competing in the same category of Supporting Actor.

Multi-racial nominees for the best screenplay category range from Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, Kemo Powers’s One Night in Miami, Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari to Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah and Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger.

Frances McDormand joins other renowned stars like Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine to have nominations across five decades. She is the first woman ever to have been nominated for acting and best picture in the same year of the same film.

Riz Ahmed, the first Pakistan descent, Muslim actor to be nominated in the history of Oscar nominations for The Sound of Metal. Sir Anthony Hopkin (The Father) is the first person to receive back-to-back acting nominations in their 80s, the oldest lead actor nominee of all time.

In the meantime, two Pixar films have been nominated in the same year for Animated Feature, Dan Scanlon’s Onward and Pete Docter’s Soul.

Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round is the third non-English language film to receive a nomination in Best Director as well as International Feature Film.

We still remember Chadwick Boseman for his “Wakanda Forever”, who happens to be the first African American actor to be nominated posthumously. As if this was not enough, the whole cast of Venom has been nominated for Oscars this time (Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Woody Harrelson).