The most pressing issue facing Americans right now—the presidential race—looms over most things, and Hollywood is no exception. The entertainment industry is coming out to back Kamala Harris in her run as the presumed Democratic nominee against Donald Trump. And just as the presidential race is heating up, so is the Oscar race.

Understandably, the question of how the current presidential race could affect the Oscar race ranks very low on most Americans’ list of concerns. But it’s still worth considering, especially over here at Awards Insider. We’ve already been hearing that most studios are shifting their promotional campaigns to avoid the November 5 election week, since they believe it’ll take up all of the country’s cultural oxygen. What remains to be seen is how the actual Oscars in March could be affected by the outcome of the election.

As we note on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen below), politics often makes its way into the Academy Awards—through both impassioned speeches and the winners that are chosen. Back in 2017, the Oscar race was a heated battle between the shiny musical La La Land and the heart-wrenching drama Moonlight. At the time, Hollywood was still grappling with the results of Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. Moonlight is an incredible film from a talented director—but some Oscar voters might have backed it to make a statement, to emphasize that Hollywood was still a welcoming place for marginalized people and stories. That same year, The Salesman won the foreign-language-film Oscar—after director Asghar Farhadi chose to boycott the awards, a protest against the Trump administration’s travel ban. The film hadn’t gone into the night as the front-runner, but perhaps found additional support from voters hoping to send Trump a message. Even presenters expressed their feelings about the political upheaval at the time, with Gael García Bernal seeming to go off-script to speak out against Trump’s proposed wall dividing Mexico and the US as he presented the best-animated-feature category: “As a Mexican, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that separates us.”

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This year, the most obvious film tied to the drama of the presidential election is The Apprentice, the Ali Abbasi film that traces Trump’s early real estate career as a mentee of Roy Cohn. Starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Cohn—and written by VF special correspondent Gabriel Sherman—the film paints a dark picture of Trump’s rise, including corruption, an obsession with power, and a sexual assault scene. With strong performances from both Stan and Strong and an October release date, the film could earn support from the anti-Trump sentiment of Hollywood, despite being released by a smaller distributor. Trump’s team has also threatened to sue the filmmakers, which has only brought more attention to the film.

Other films in this year’s awards conversation touch on issues that weigh heavily on the minds of Americans, especially stories about marginalized people whose rights remain under threat—and who could face greater challenges depending on the outcome of this election. Sing Sing, starring Colman Domingo, is a deeply moving drama about men in prison who put on plays, but also explores the broken prison system. Nickel Boys, based on the Colson Whitehead novel, centers on two Black boys who are sent to an abusive reform school, and examines the rampant racism of the 1960s. Emilia Perez is a bombastic musical and a Cannes breakout, and is also centered on the story of a transgender character. It stars Karla Sofía Gascón—the first transgender woman to win best actress at Cannes. If nominated for best actress, she could make Oscar history.

Of course, not every 2024 film—or even most of them—has political undercurrents. There are also movies about gladiators, sandworms, opera singers, and popes—though even that last one, Conclave, could be viewed as a rumination on the transference of power. Politics and Hollywood are intertwined in so many ways; now we just wait to see how one will affect the other.