Awards a consequential victory for women in entertainment

However, this year, coupled with the inclusion of two female directors, the field of acting nominees is the most diverse ever with a total of nine performers of colour compared to just one last year.

Viola Davis, with her fourth Oscar nomination for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, goes head-to-head with Mcdormand’s bristling desert Fern.

Strong women are a running theme at this year’s awards.

Critics are hedging their bets on Zhao – the Chinese-american indy director whose Nomadland brought a slice of life – with all its gritty ugliness and mundanity – to the screen, juxtaposing it with the beauty of the deserts, and beautifully tempering its sadness with hope.

Zhao, now the toast of Hollywood, also made history with her Bafta win for best director. She became the first woman of colour and only the second woman ever to win the prize. Bigelow was the first winner.

Nomadland resonates with life in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, which has closed cinemas around the world and crippled the entertainment industry.

Zhao’s sweeping shots of big skies and rough, open terrain touch our need for freedom to escape the confines of the past year, to get out and see what lies beyond.

The movie was adapted from Jessica Bruder’s 2017 investigative book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-first Century.

With such a smorgasbord of incredible female talent being recognised at the Oscars this year, judging would have been no easy feat.

However, no matter who walks away with the golden statuette, the 2021 Academy Awards will go down in history as a consequential victory for women in entertainment.