PUBLISHED
December 07, 2025
The themes emerging from early Best Picture predictions for the 2026 Oscars reveal a great deal about what filmmakers are choosing to spotlight—and what audiences are responding to. Together, these strikingly emotional and socially charged narratives offer a vivid snapshot of where both creators and viewers find themselves in this moment, shaping the tone of the upcoming awards season.
Family, brotherhood, sibling relationships
Sinners and Sentimental Value have themes like family, brotherhood, and sibling relationships. An emotional connection with the characters and story matters the most to the audience.
People crave narratives that highlight intimacy in storytelling, generational and moral inheritances, family bonds and connections, loyalty, and people who hold us together.
The cinema is reflecting a global desire for personal anchors and societal instability. Family stories that are set during periods of cultural anxiety are even a source of comfort and serve as a mirror.
Fractured households and generational traumas have become the most commonly talked-about issues of our society, and films are the best way to portray them. Cinema is becoming a refuge where audiences can process their own anxieties.
When our society feels unstable, it can relate to these family-centred narratives, depicting our own longing for connection. In a world that increasingly feels chaotic, we try to find solace in personal stories that have come out of our hopes and fears.
People tend to cling to each other when systems fail, love persists through crisis, and the private world of family becomes the battleground for handling our own pressure in the era of anxieties.
Humans are the true monsters?
How far is too far? AI, genetic editing, and automation provide benefits to humans, but deep automation for the purpose of reshaping life takes us to rethink the moral cost of progress. The audiences are drawn to films that interrogate the accountability of unintended consequences.
Today, in the world of AI, stories about the responsibility and weight of creation alongside the narratives of biotechnology, innovation, and even catastrophe have blurred the lines between fiction and reality.
Scientific hubris and responsibility of creation are explicitly evident from Guillermo del Toro’s recent reimagination of a classic tale, Frankenstein (2025). The film expands on the theme as a warning for playing against God.
You can be a creator, but the moral accountability for the creation is still debated. The creation can breed monstrosity, but del Toro draws an imagery of scientific creation carrying the weight similar to the acts of divine creation, i.e, moral and ethical gravity.
Grief and loss
Grief and loss are two inevitable truths of one’s existence in this world. Hamnet taps directly into this universal experience, revealing how people navigate through emotional wreckage when they lose their loved ones.
The lingering presence of those fractures caused by loss reshapes our identities, rewrites our relationships, and forces us to confront ourselves without those who lived once.
These two emotional states imply a transformative process. The characters mourn in the film while allowing the audience to unravel, rebuild, and redefine themselves internally and quietly.
The journey of this intimate human truth is portrayed in this year’s early Oscar predictions, stating that people search for meaning and connection even in times of redemption. The aftermath of devastation is not harsh but full of resilience.
Government corruption
Government corruption is a recurring theme of several films around the world. This time, early predicted Oscar films, The Secret Agent, A House of Dynamite, Bugonia, and One Battle After Another talk about it one way or the other.
Social and political chaos, along with government corruption, signal something deeper than just a narrative coincidence. These films approach the different angles of our most-trusted entity, the government.
The institutional decay, political manipulation, moral compromise, and the ways ordinary citizens become entangled in these systems are all parts of the story. The truth of the structure that is meant to protect us is exposed in the societal fallout of living under it.
These films find a way to show the erosion of society’s trust that they once had in the leadership, since it is no longer synonymous with integrity. In one of the most haunting moments in A House of Dynamite, we’re left grappling with existential questions about whether humanity’s potential end could ultimately and mercilessly come at the hands of its own government.
This year’s awards contenders speak about this societal skepticism, uncertainty, fragility of the world we live in, and an urgent desire to understand how we got here. Is there any way out?
Identity and good versus evil
A battle that has existed since the beginning of time is between good and evil. Taking the example of another possible Oscar nomination, Wicked: For Good, the characters face dilemmas that force them to question their own motives.
It is the same consequences of actions that we have been trying to figure out. In the contemporary world of rapid technological change, special upheaval, and political polarisation, viewers are reminded that good and evil are often intertwined within human behaviour.
We inhabit a world of moral ambiguity, where each choice sparks its own emotional drama. The struggle is ingrained within our daily lives, the small decisions we make, the empathy we extend, and the courage we summon in the face of adversity.
These films capture a societal longing for moral clarity while acknowledging nuanced realities of the modern world. It incites us to ponder: where do we stand in this timeless struggle, and how do our actions tip the balance for the better, or worse?
To sum up, every idea revolving around these themes is connected to us. We wrestle in an uncertain world, and this year’s Oscar contenders reflect both our personal and collective consciousness.
They remind us that cinema is more than entertainment; it is a mirror, refuge, and a guide. It is an evocative snapshot of who we are today and what we aspire to become. In exploring these emotional and ethical landscapes, they reveal that the stories that resonate most are those that hold up a lens to humanity itself.
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
