2 films with Oscar potential

IT'S THE ONE potential sequel that Hollywood is desperately hoping to avoid.

There’s been a closeup on the lack of diversity in the movie industry after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Sundance darling “The Birth of a Nation” seemed poised to reverse the trend — but its awards prospects disintegrated amid the off-screen drama involving writer/director/star Nate Parker, who was accused of raping a fellow Penn State University student in 1999. He was found not guilty.

Pan to a pair of small indies — “Moonlight” and “Loving” — giving hope to ending a two-year run of no Academy Awards nominations for actors of color.

“Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins didn’t grasp the acclaim for his drama about a boy in inner-city Miami struggling with his homosexuality and his single mother’s drug addiction. At least, not until he started getting personal thank-you notes from moviegoers at film festivals.

“Then I started to realize (the film) is bigger than its one hour and 50 minutes,” Jenkins told the Daily News. “Audiences were identifying with this character”

“Miami is literally as far away from Hollywood as you can get in the continental United States,” he added. “Those things weren’t in my mind as we’re making this film, but now that the film is making its way into the world, the upside is there are kids and adults who want or need to see themselves on screen.”

One of those adults was Mahershala Ali, who plays a drug dealer that becomes an unlikely father figure in the film. As a veteran of the business, the “House of Cards” alum appreciates plum roles written for black actors.

“I tend to only go out for what’s right for me,” Ali said. “And what is right for me is going to be different from what is right — say, for a Ryan Gosling. What I go out for tends to be limited by my race and reflecting the qualities that I specifically bring to the table. But I still have the same desire to be a part of great

projects as any other