It’s almost the end of my favourite season: Awards.

I’m only half-joking, too. Each year, I try to watch every film nominated for Best Picture, and the performances nominated in the acting categories.

I’ve only got a couple to watch this weekend before Monday, when Hollywood’s leading lights - and the people who light them onscreen - will gather to celebrate the films of 2025. 

How do the Oscars actually work? How do you win one? And does anyone have any tips for getting ‘Golden’ out of my head? 

Read on for the answers to at least two of those questions. 

At its core, the Oscars is an industry awards ceremony, like the Logies here in Australia or the Grammys for the music industry. They are technically called the Academy Awards, because they are voted on by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The gold statuette handed to winners is known as an Oscar. Fun fact: no one knows how it came to have that name. 

There are more than 10,000 people in AMPAS, spread across 19 branches for the jobs on a film set, from sound techs and makeup artists to A-list actors. 

AMPAS has diversified and almost doubled its membership over the past 14 years, after a Los Angeles Times exposé revealed its then-5,800 members were 94% white and 77% male with a median age of 62. 

When it’s time to select the nominees in each category (five in each, except for Best Picture with 10 slots), only the members of each individual branch can vote for their relevant category. Directors vote to choose the nominees for Best Director, actors for the acting categories, makeup artists for makeup, and so on. 

After the nominees have been selected, every member of the Academy can vote in every category. There is one exception: in the documentary, international film, and short film categories, members must watch every film to be able to vote. 

Yes, that means hypothetically, an AMPAS member could vote in Best Picture having seen exactly zero of the 10 nominated films.

Any film that premiered on or after New Year’s Day 2025 is eligible. Anything released in 2026 will be eligible next year. 

Of the films released in a given year, only a handful will actually campaign for an Oscar. 

I say campaign, because trying to win an Oscar can be as demanding as running for political office, with similar levels of financial backing and numbers of media appearances. A film’s cast and crew must first convince their immediate colleagues to submit them for a nomination, and then convince the entire Academy that they were the best of the year. 

The king of the Oscar campaign for many years was convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein, often in cahoots with publicist Scott Rudin, who admitted in 2025 that he had thrown things at his assistants in the heat of a campaign. Weinstein’s influence was such that many actors thanked him in their Oscar acceptance speeches. 

The height of Weinstein’s power - and a key example of a modern Oscar campaign - was the 1999 ceremony. 

For the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, Weinstein launched a campaign that was unprecedented in scope. Mark Gill, then-president of Weinstein’s company Miramax, told Vanity Fair in 2017: “This was not saying to the stars, ‘OK, you can go on a couple of talk shows to open the movie and do a weekend of interviews at a junket and thanks so much for helping. [It] was just ‘Good morning. You’ve got three more months of shaking hands and kissing babies in you.’”

An oral history published in The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 included more details from those who were there, including Weinstein holding screenings at an aged care home where elderly AMPAS members lived, and launching a ‘whisper campaign’ about the quality of his competitor, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. 

Per that oral history, Spielberg told his publicist not to “get down in the mud with Harvey Weinstein,” not to engage in “negative campaigning.” 

In the end, Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture, beating Saving Private Ryan. 

Just like with political campaigning, a long run to an Oscar can be torpedoed by an errant comment or a mistimed appearance, causing a frontrunner to be overtaken at the final hurdle. Or a year can be the exact right amount of time to build momentum for a performance that might otherwise have been overlooked. 

Take Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which premiered in April 2025. The film was a box office smash and, almost a year after its release, goes into Monday’s ceremony with a record 16 nominations. 

Until a few weeks ago, it seemed Timothée Chalamet was the most likely to walk away with the Oscar for Best Actor for his lead role in Marty Supreme. 

Last Monday, however, Sinners star Michael B. Jordan beat Chalamet to the Actor Award (previously known as the SAG Award) in their category. 

The win came at a crucial time for Jordan - the beginning of the final week of Oscar voting. His genuine surprise at winning and his emotional speech may end up tipping the scales in his favour come Oscar night.

Another moment that has been suggested to have influenced Jordan’s chances is the surfacing of Chalamet’s comments about the popularity of ballet and opera. While the interview in question was published in late February, the clip that went viral was posted on X just 90 minutes before Oscar voting closed, so it’s unlikely the discourse around his statement will have actually impacted his chances. 

Chalamet and Jordan aren’t the only people TDA will be watching for on Monday: there are four Aussies nominated for Oscars this year. 

In the acting categories, Rose Byrne is up for Best Actress for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Jacob Elordi is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein. 

Nick Cave is nominated for Best Original Song for his work on Train Dreams, while Hamnet production designer Fiona Crombie rounds out the local nominees. 

In Australia, the Oscars will be broadcast on Channel 7 and 7plus. The ceremony starts earlier than normal this year, at 10am (AEDT, or 4pm local LA time). We’ll be covering any Aussie wins - fingers crossed! - over on the TDA Instagram feed. 

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Early bird tickets are just $45 until 31 March and come with a goody bag worth over $250. It sold out in Sydney last year. Just saying…