We had one film release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.

BlacKkKlansman

Director Spike Lee burst onto the Hollywood scene in the 1980s thanks to his acclaimed films She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, but it was Do the Right Thing that brought him close to Oscar. At least as close as he ever would come outside of the documentary category.

Spike Lee has been making films about the black experience now for over 30 years now and while his acclaim has been up-and-down the entirety of that time, he has never been closer to becoming an Oscar winner than with BlacKkKlansman, a period film that speaks to our times like few other films in recent memory have.

The year that Do the Right Thing was shut out of the Oscars was also the year that the film Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture under the direction of white filmmaker Bruce Beresford. That film, which formed a connection between the discrimination being faced by Jewish Americans with that faced by black Americans, was frequently cited by Lee as emblematic of the struggles black filmmakers and stories had faced in cinema up to and including that year. It is a similar struggle faced by those same filmmakers and stories today. While 30 years on, things are starting to slowly change within the industry, they aren’t quite there yet.

With critics heavily supporting Lee’s film and a relative dearth of contenders so far this year, it’s possible that BlacKkKlansman‘s zeitgeist moment may lead it to Oscar glory, perhaps as recognition of the imbalance that’s been present in cinema for at least as long as Lee has been making films. While the film has an uphill battle to win Oscars, it is now doubt in line for several nominations, including several in major categories.