The 95th Academy Award nominations were officially released on January 24, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is leading with 11 nominations, followed by The Banshees of Inisheran and All Quiet on the Western Front, both with nine. All three films are in line for Best Picture, which is one of thfe “Big Five'' categories, also including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. The Oscars will take place on Sunday, March 12th.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an A24 film with an Asian-based cast. It currently has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Michelle Yeoh, who plays Evelyn Quan Wang in the film, is nominated for Best Actress this year, making history as the first openly Asian nominee. 

“I hope this completely changes things. I hope that we, as actors, don’t get cast because we’re African American or Asian or this or that. We are cast because we are good at what we do, and we should be given the opportunity to show that. If this is what you love, if this is what you’re passionate about and you want to be a good storyteller and be able to have your stories to be told — just don’t give up. Look at me, 40 years down the road,” Yeoh said.

Ana de Armas was nominated for Blonde. Blonde has been at the center of several conversations, including exploitation and the use of extreme graphic imagery. To several watchers, it comes to a great surprise that Blonde was even considered because it was not well received.

Ana de Armas getting nominated meant that African American actresses like Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler did not. The Best Actress category is so predominantly white that the first and only Black woman to win was Halle Berry in 2002. In fact, Berry was so shocked to win that once her name was called she repeated, “Oh my God” over and over. According to Insider, 89% of Oscar winners in the past decade have been White. 

“We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards black women,” Chinonye Chukwu said, director of Till, starring Danielle Deadwyler. Till is based on the true story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was killed in 1955. 

All five of the best actor nominations are first-timers. Paul Mescal, Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, and Bill Nighy are the five men, and there doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming bias as to who the people want to win. 

“If Brendan Fraser doesn’t win best actor for [The Whale]. I’m throwing hands and the Academy is going to catch ‘em” Twitter user @TheDiscFather wrote. User @FoFoPrime replied with “Butler deserves it more for Elvis. Fraser is a close second place though.”

Although there are many nominations people support, there’s also a lack of them. Movies like Nope, The Woman King, and Pearl, all with hundreds of critic raves and the public’s approval, came up with 0 nominations. 

“So Nope didn’t get a single Oscar nomination but the movie that had a telepathic fetus begging to not get aborted did” Twitter user @Cheritouu wrote, referencing Blonde’s best actress nom. Nope stars several Black actors, including Daniel Kaluuya, who is notably in one of the director’s previous movies, Get Out. Get Out, ironically, did get several Oscar nominations back in 2018.