Congratulations to the Sinners camp on its Oscar night triumphs – affirmation that cinema can be deep and entertaining at the same time. It might not have swept the major awards as some of us had hoped, but it is still a personal victory for Ryan Coogler, and also the validation that Black cinema has long been denied. And despite handling heavy themes of racist violence, Sinners will probably be remembered by history as a message of hope and unity in a turbulent era.
Nobody could argue that Coogler’s film didn’t deserve its success. Sinners is a complete, unified, all-round work of art. Everything seems to be in tune: the story, the performances (not least Michael B Jordan’s technically demanding dual role – justly rewarded with the best actor Oscar), the music, the costumes , the production design, the visuals (a boundary-smashing award for Autumn Durald Arkapaw – the first woman and the first Black winner of the best cinematography Oscar). Sinners’ record 16 nominations and four wins were confirmation that the Academy agreed.
It all stems from the extraordinary vision and commitment of Coogler. Despite taking in the epic sweep of early 20th-century Black history, Sinners is a highly personal film. As the director explained to me last year, it was inspired by his family’s Mississippi roots, his uncle’s love of the blues, his extensive interviews with members of the “silent generation” who grew up in the era, even his identical twin aunts. In the popular imagination, it takes military resolve and lots of shouting through megaphones to marshal a project this complex to fruition, but by all accounts Coogler is one of the most hard-working, detail-oriented, even-tempered film-makers out there.
Sinners honours and foregrounds the Black experience but it brings everyone else along for the ride. It takes care to include other minority groups in the 1930s deep south: Native American, Chinese, Irish – all historically accurate. (White racists may feel hard done by, though even they were probably tapping their feet to the soundtrack.) But above all that, it’s entertaining in the broadest, most generous sense: compelling character drama plus violent horror action; historic realism plus genre thrills – these are the things we go to the cinema for. And it doesn’t have to be one or the other: it can be both!
For a long time, it felt as if the Academy treated Black cinema in the same way it did foreign-language cinema: worthy of recognition on occasion (especially if there was a sympathetic white character in the mix, or behind the camera), but not really a commercial prospect. Coogler has blown that out of the water, first with the Black Panther movies, now with this, the seventh highest grossing movie of 2025 in the US. So much for “go woke, go broke”.
On a deeper level, Sinners says something profound and poignant about art and culture in the context of identity and race – and it does it through music. Coogler, whose Oscar night get-up included guitar and treble clef shapes woven into his braids, has called blues music “the most important contribution America has made to global culture”, and his movie celebrates it in that spirit (given the musical talent the movie assembles, it would have been a crime if another film had won the best original score Oscar). Blues music is an expression of not just Black identity but Black history, memory, suffering, stretching all the way back to Africa: “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion,” says Delroy Lindo’s Delta Slim. “No, we brought this with us.” You could say blues music was appropriated by white musicians, who made a lot more money out of it than Black folks in the Mississippi Delta ever did, and many have read Jack O’Connell’s folkie-vampire antagonist in this context; the white interloper coming to get a piece of what Black folks have built. (Significantly, Coogler secured a deal with his studio, Warners, whereby full ownership of the movie reverts to him after 25 years – unlike bluesman Robert Johnson, he didn’t have to sell his soul to the devil; more of a long lease.)
But it feels as if Sinners is saying something more nuanced: that blues music is a contribution to culture. It’s not just a commodity; it’s also a gift. It’s part of a conversation, part of what makes multiculturalism work, a vital ingredient in the American melting pot, a way to connect to emotion, history, other cultures, our essential humanity. By extension, cinema can do the same – the story of Sinners suggests this; the success of Sinners proves it. At this fractious time in global, and particularly American, politics, this is a profound and poignant message.
