Oscar-winning movies were political but speeches barely went there

Opinion

March 16, 2026 — 4:58pm

If there’s a key takeaway from this year’s Oscars ceremony, it’s how politics featured – or rather, didn’t.

The two biggest winners were One Battle After Another, which won six awards, and Sinners with four. Both are deeply political films – the former overtly so, the latter allegorically but still unmistakably political.

Throw Jessie Buckley’s win into the mix for Hamnet, a film that is in its own way quite profoundly political, and you’ve got a triumvirate of movies that have a lot to say about some of the biggest issues of the moment: the rise of the Christian right in American politics and the usurpation of democracy; the deep-seated racism in American cultural and economic life; a woman’s right to control her body; and the transformative power of art.

Coupled with the mad state of the world in which we find ourselves, wars raging, economic disparity growing, democracy under assault and the extremist right on the rise seemingly everywhere, you might have expected more than the average round of speechifying at the Dolby Theatre. Yet it was almost entirely absent.

Javier Bardem was a notable exception, wearing his big “no Guerra” (no war) lapel pin as he took the stage to co-present the award for best international feature. In case the viewers at home couldn’t see it, he cut straight to the point, saying “no to war, and free Palestine”.

Joachim Trier won that award, for Sentimental Value, and he made a plea for the welfare of children. “All adults are responsible for all children,” he said, paraphrasing African-American writer James Baldwin. “Let’s not vote for politicians who don’t take this seriously into account.”

Other than that, there was host Conan O’Brien’s oblique jab at the literally monumental ego of Donald Trump, whose penchant for appending his name to buildings such as the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts is well established.

O’Brien jokingly renamed the Oscars venue as the “Has a Small Penis Theatre”, and added “let’s see you put your name before that”. The US president wasn’t named, but the gag landed all the same.

There was a swipe at America’s messed-up position on gun control from the best documentary short film winners, while David Borenstein, co-director of best documentary feature Mr Nobody against Putin, was another who referenced Trump without naming him (in a speech that was simultaneously and more overtly about Trump’s Very Good Friend Vladimir Putin).

The film he co-directed with Russian schoolteacher Pavel Talankin is, Borenstein said, “about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity”.

“We are complicit when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities and we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”

These were small moments, though. And from the big winners – Sinners and One Battle – there was nothing.

Depending on your perspective on the place of politics in entertainment (and especially awards shows), that might come as a relief or as a disappointment. But it almost certainly says something about how fractured the world has become, and how much taking a position risks alienating a sizeable chunk of the audience.

It also suggests that many in Hollywood have come to realise, in the wake of the resounding defeat of the celebrity-endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, that their activism can be counterproductive.

Jennifer Lawrence put it well in an interview with The New York Times in November, when she said “we’ve learnt, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for”.

In the wake of that realisation, she said, she had to question what was the value in her weighing in on political issues when doing so is merely “going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart”.

Legend has it that studio boss Samuel Goldwyn once said, “if you have a message, call Western Union” (though historians now say the source of the line is, in fact, Moss Hart). In other words, the movies are for entertaining people, not lecturing them.

There are all sorts of reasons to disagree with that view, but judging from this most ostentatiously apolitical awards telecast, it seems Hollywood – chastened by previously unthinkable division in the country, unprecedented centralisation of the channels of communication, and oppressive threats of lawsuits – has finally decided it’s one message it should heed.

On its night of nights, at least.

Want more expert coverage on the world of film? Sign up for our Screening Room newsletter.