For the second year in a row, #OscarsSoWhite has dragged America’s diversity problem back into the global spotlight. [...] Yet the recent report by USC’s Annenberg School found that not much has changed—only seven percent of films in the past year had casts that accurately reflected the nation’s actual demographics. 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards its Oscars on Sunday, and one of the nominees in the category of Best Documentary Feature is “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” a chronicle of the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv. 

Hollywood has long been a powerful shaper of global culture. [...] But increasingly films such as “Sivas” and other foreign-language movies, including those nominated for this year’s Academy Awards, are chipping at the edges of American dominance. 

Ritesh Batra believes each film has its own journey. If so, then The Lunchbox is on a long and successful one, with the latest feather being its nomination for the prestigious BAFTA. There was much uproar following the government’s decision to not send The Lunchbox as India’s official entry to the Academy Awards but a BAFTA nomination almost two years later shows the timelessness of this rare and honest Indian film.

The American director of the chilling Indonesian documentary “The Act of Killing” has won dozens of awards so far for the film and could add one of the movie industry’s most coveted honors Sunday at the Oscars. But so far, the director, Joshua Oppenheimer, has not succeeded in accomplishing what he considered a greater goal — jump-starting a debate in Indonesia that will compel the government to finally open a formal inquiry into one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.