Zoe Saldaña Made History at the 2025 Oscars, but Latine Hollywood Failed to Rise to the Moment

The 97th Oscars are in the books and wow, was that a boring show. Obstinately, the drama was supposed to come from who won the statuettes — with a three-way race among Anora, The Brutalist, and Conclave making many of the categories hard to call. But, shocker, the joy of awards shows isn’t in who wins or even what they wear (although that can be fun) — it’s in the speeches they give and the stances they take.

And this was a nearly four-hour show without substance. Ahead of time, host Conan O’Brian pledged to only lightly tread on politics and he stuck to that, with only one joke touching on U.S.-Russia relations making it into his schtick. The result was a toothless broadcast that felt like eating a can of condensed milk. The first taste is homey and delicious, but by the end, you feel sick and can’t wait for it to be over.

When Zoe Saldaña won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the Puerto Rican-Dominican star started her speech looking for her mamí, the accent unmistakable, and she ended it in Spanish. Along the way, she remarked how she is the first Dominican-American to win that award, and while she didn’t say so, she’s also only the third Latina to win for acting at the Academy Awards — and the only one to do so without playing Anita in West Side Story.

Good for her. She cried, she thanked her family, and she clearly greatly valued the recognition of her peers, which makes sense. 

But her film, Emilia Pérez, has come under a lot of criticism. Its titular character is a trans Mexican cartel boss who transitions, becoming a woman and starting a new life that eventually includes time with her kids and former wife (all unaware) before descending into Greek tragedy. 

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, a straight, white French guy, the film has no firsthand knowledge of either the Mexican or trans experience. Mexican audiences skewered it, while trans folks called it, “disingenuous, harmful nonsense.” Defending her film in the press room backstage, Saldaña insisted the Emilia Pérez team meant no disrespect. “That was never our intention,” she said before saying the film was really about four women who could have been from anywhere. “These four women could have been Russian, could have been Dominican, could have been Black from Detroit, could have been from Israel, could have been from Gaza.”

Honestly, I agree. Emilia Pérez could have taken place on Mars as easily as in Mexico, but that’s a weakness not a strength. Audriard and team chose a specific place, even writing all the songs and dialogue in Spanish, but then disrespected that place, their characters’ specifics, with their ignorance.

So while Saldaña’s win deserves to be celebrated, it’s notable what kind of Latina gets the accolades: From West Side Story to Emilia Pérez, it’s been one that’s filtered through a white, male perspective. And in the case of Emilia Pérez, it’s also one that has absolutely nothing to say about Latinidad itself, but rather just happens to be set in Latin America and happens to cast (some) Latine bodies.

And the whole broadcast had that identity-light, politics of condescension vibe. Several Latinas took the stage, although Saldaña was the only winner. There was Ana de Armas, Rachel Zegler, and Selena Gomez, all looking beautiful and taking the opportunity to promote their current projects. None of them had anything of note to say, not of their communities being targeted by mass deportations under the Trump administration, or of the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or of how the rise of anti-Latine and anti-immigrant xenophobia in the U.S. is harming our young people.

And if you tuned out after the first hour and 45 minutes, you wouldn’t have seen a single Latine on stage anyway. That’s how Hollywood seems to like it: with marginalized communities there to add to the pageantry but not actually have our authentic voices celebrated. And of course, it’s not just Emilia Pérez. The night’s big winner was Anora, a film written, directed, and edited by Sean Baker, starring Mikey Madison. It won five Oscars, four for Baker, including Best Picture, and one for Madison. That he’s a white guy telling the story of sex workers filtered so exclusively through his own lens — he even bragged about how he didn’t let anyone into the editing room — feels problematic at best. At least Madison won, too, or else it would have all been awarding a guy for telling a distinctly feminine story.

In his many trips to the podium, Baker did mention sex workers, while the folks who won for Emilia Pérez neglected to acknowledge the trans community, a move that demonstrates how their film was always pure extraction. But Baker’s most impassioned plea wasn’t to decriminalize sex work or provide living-wage alternatives; it was to support movie theaters. You know, the pressing issue of our time.

When I’m Still Here won for Best International Feature, the broadcast had an opportunity to redeem itself. Here’s a Brazilian film about fighting fascism at home with big and small acts of resistance. They played the director off stage after less than a minute at the mic.

Such was Hollywood’s utter failure to rise to this moment. Yes, the Academy did give an Oscar to No Other Land, bringing up its Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham who decried “settler violence,” the “Israeli occupation” and “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” But the entertainment industry has such a lack of courage that no studio has bought the film for distribution. They’re willing to vote, for it but not risk a dollar in having its message meet the public.

Cowardice seemed to be the theme of this year’s Oscars. Adrian Brody gave the longest speech in Oscar history, starting off thanking everyone who’d ever shown him respect and kindness without interrogating why his white, maleness might predispose those around him to show him deference. That he insisted on keeping to the podium, asserting his privilege, without saying much of anything only further drove home the point: the Oscars is a space for white guys to grandstand and pretend the world owes them everything — including the right to tell anyone’s story.

Emilia Pérez may have fallen out of favor, since Academy members could no longer pat themselves on the back for recognizing lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón as the first openly trans nominee given her history of abhorrent, racist tweets. But she was still here, being gently teased by Conan whose jokes made it seem like her hate speech was little more than a faux pas.

Instead, the Academy recognized Anora and white guys’ right to do whatever they want. And they largely ignored the year’s message films, the ones like Nickel Boys and Sing Sing that challenged white hegemony and the ones like Wicked, I’m Still Here, The Substance that explored or exemplified paths of resistance. They didn’t even have much love for Conclave that gently questioned the Catholic Church.

Instead it was the boring, same old, same old. Don’t expect Hollywood to save us any time soon. The utter lack of bravery at the 97th Academy Awards shows us just how bereft of leadership they are. Change is up to us viewers, not the 100-year-old institution that equates excellence with the white, male perspective.