What the Oscars Are Really Trying to Tell Us?

Every year a small gold statue is handed to a film and we are told that this is the best picture of the year.

And almost every year someone asks the same question: Really?

The surprise is understandable. Often the winning film is not the most spectacular one. It is not always the most innovative, the most entertaining, or even the one most people loved. The film that wins the Oscar sometimes feels quieter than its competitors, or stranger, or smaller.

Which raises a useful suspicion.

Perhaps the Academy is not always choosing the best film.

Perhaps it is choosing the most necessary one.

Stories do not exist only to entertain us. They help a culture think about itself. They give shape to anxieties that are difficult to name and language to questions we are only beginning to ask. When a society chooses a story and lifts it up as important, it is often revealing something about what it fears, what it hopes, and what it believes it needs to hear.

The Oscars, then, are not merely an awards ceremony.

They are a kind of yearly message.

Consider the moment when CODA won Best Picture in 2022. Its story is simple: a hearing daughter in a deaf family trying to navigate love, responsibility, and identity.

But its cultural context was anything but simple. The film arrived after years of public criticism about who gets to be seen in Hollywood. The #OscarsSoWhite movement had exposed the industry’s long history of overlooking diverse voices. The question was no longer whether representation mattered. The question was whether the institutions of storytelling were willing to change.

CODA offered a quiet answer. The film centered deaf characters played by deaf actors and allowed their world—its language, its humor, its intimacy—to stand at the heart of the story.

When Troy Kotsur accepted his award partly in sign language, the moment felt larger than the ceremony.

Sometimes recognition arrives quietly.

Sometimes it arrives all at once.

Then came the wonderfully chaotic Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Best Picture winner of 2023.

On the surface the film appears absurd: alternate universes, flying kung fu, talking rocks, and bagels that threaten to swallow existence itself. But its emotional center is remarkably simple. A tired woman, overwhelmed by life, tries to hold together her family while confronting the dizzying possibilities of what her life might have been.

It is a story that could only emerge from our moment. We live surrounded by infinite digital information, endless online identities, and constant pressure to optimize our lives. The modern imagination is filled with alternate timelines—different careers, different selves, different choices.

The film turns that anxiety into cosmic comedy.

And then, gently, it offers a small solution.

Kindness.

Not certainty. Not mastery.

Kindness.

A year later the Academy honored Oppenheimer.

At first glance it is a historical film about the creation of the atomic bomb. But history has a way of returning precisely when we need to look at it again.

In recent years the world has become newly aware of technological power. Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than many expected. Geopolitical tensions have revived fears about nuclear escalation. Humanity once again finds itself asking an old question: what happens when our ability to create power outruns our ability to guide it wisely?

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer—a scientist who helped unleash a force capable of destroying cities—suddenly feels less like history and more like a mirror.

The past, after all, is often a way of talking about the present.

And now we arrive at Anora, the most recent Best Picture winner.

In a time when cinema is increasingly dominated by billion-dollar franchises, cinematic universes, and streaming algorithms designed to maximize attention, the Academy chose something unexpectedly small.

An independent film.

Directed by Sean Baker, a filmmaker known for telling stories about people living on the edges of society, Anora follows a young sex worker whose life collides with the chaotic world of sudden wealth and power. The film is messy, funny, intimate, and deeply human. It does not feel engineered by corporate storytelling. It feels closer to life.

And that is precisely why its victory matters.

For years audiences have worried that cinema is slowly being swallowed by spectacle and intellectual property—stories designed to extend franchises rather than explore humanity.

Against that backdrop, the victory of Anora feels almost like a reminder.

That cinema still belongs to storytellers.

That intimate human stories still matter.

That even in an age of algorithms and universes of superheroes, a small independent film about flawed, ordinary people can still stand at the center of the stage.

Seen together, these films form something like a cultural diary. Each one captures a question the world was already beginning to ask.

Who gets to be seen and heard?
How do we live meaningfully in a chaotic and overwhelming age?
What responsibilities come with creating powerful technologies?
And who still gets to tell stories in an industry increasingly shaped by corporate spectacle?

The Oscars do not always answer these questions well. Sometimes they choose cautiously. Sometimes they choose imperfectly. But each year they choose a story that reflects what the culture believes is worth thinking about.

Which means that the Best Picture winner is not merely a film.

It is a signal.

So the next time the award surprises you—and it probably will—pause for a moment before deciding whether the Academy made the wrong choice.

Ask a different question.

Why this story?

And why now?

Because sometimes the most revealing thing about a culture is not the stories it tells.

It is the story it decides to honor.