Oscars 2021: Why the Academy should take cue from BAFTA, and implement a jury system to ensure equity

The BAFTAs have long been labelled a younger — and if you ask Youn Yuh-jung, “snobbier” — brother to the Oscars. Four out of the six Best Director nominees were women: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland, Shannon Murphy for Babyteeth, Jasmila Zbanic for Quo Vadis Aida?, and Sarah Gavron for Rocks. Some of 2020’s best performances, like Alfre Woodard in Clemency and Dominique Fishback in Judas and the Black Messiah, didn’t make it to the final five of the Oscars or Screen Actors Guild Awards. Oscar statuette The Oscars do employ a jury system, but only for picking the nominees for Best International Film. Another voter admitted, in a Vulture interview in 2017, that a lot of his peers hadn’t watched Best Picture nominee Get Out because it wasn’t an “Oscar film.” The Hollywood Reporter’s 2015 study found that at least six percent of the voters hadn’t watched the year’s Best Picture nominees.