The Academy Awards are a time to celebrate cinema by honoring the best films of the year.
Do filmgoers always agree with the Academy about which films are best? No, but among the 2025 Oscar nominees are three stories involving the legal system, and they are all worth watching.
The Judge: The Seed of the Sacred Fig
If a judge is told what his rulings will be, is he really a judge? And if he is told what his judgments will be, what is the worth of law in his decisions? These are some of the many questions this film presents.
Iman is an honest lawyer and a devout Muslim. He has a wife and two girls. Their mostly comfortable lives in Tehran are disrupted when Iman is promoted to investigating judge, while Iran itself is rocked by protests. Then Iman discovers he is meant to sign off on judgements his superiors want, without review. Including cases with death sentences. All of this is recipe enough for a disaster, but then another volatile ingredient is added: a gun.
Iman was given the weapon for his safety. During the course of the film, in which his daughters’ disgust with the regime grows as his connection to them falters, it disappears. Who could have taken it? The only possible culprits are his family. Corruption and paranoia lead Iman to believe he can pass judgment on his family.
Judges are not immune to corruption or unjust rulings, in any country. This film is an intimate view into how intelligent and thoughtful people can be made complicit by the systems they work under.
“...when someone submits to an authoritarian situation and becomes devoted to its system, and gradually becomes biased about it, the question is: how could this bias lead to great violence, even against people close to you, not just against those outside your family...In the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are many examples in which even fathers played a role in the executions of their sons...”
Nominated for Best International Feature Film
The Attorney: I’m Still Here
Eunice Paiva was a world renowned lawyer, and the first waves she ever made were over her husband. Rubens Paiva was a civil engineer and a former congressman. And he was on the wrong side of the new regime in Brazil. One day, their home is raided and he is taken. Eunice is left with their five children and no answers as to what happened to her husband.
She realizes early on that he has been killed. One of the many people who were vanished by the regime. But Eunice never stopped asking questions. It was a defiance that put her in the crosshairs and began her years long crusade against the government. She enrolled in law school and became a leading expert on indigenous rights in Brazil. She went on to work with the Brazilian government, the World Bank, and the United Nations.
While the film revolves around the mystery of what happened to Rubens Paiva, it is more concerned about the justice he was owed and the people who mourned him. How do you live with a loss that has no answers—or rather, what happens when the government is the one who wrongs you?
You right it.
“...She always said she understood that what happened to her family was no different from what happened every day with minorities in the suburbs of Brazil. She fought for Indigenous reserves and consulted with those who wrote Brazil’s constitution in 1988. She was a woman ahead of her time, and she became herself when her family’s father figure died.”
Nominated for Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, and Best Actress (Torres)
The Plaintiff: Black Box Diaries
Shiori Itô’s story is both familiar and also the snowball that became an avalanche. In 2015, Shiori was a young journalism student. She agreed to a meal with Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the Washington Chief of the Tokyo Broadcasting System. They were to discuss a possible internship. Instead the night ended in sexual assault.
Despite there being video of an inebriated Shiori being pulled into a hotel by her assailant, she faced an uphill climb to get justice. The police did not want to accept her report and later dropped the charges against Yamaguchi. According to prosecutors, there was no evidence. Unable to bring a criminal case, she went public and filed a civil lawsuit against Yamaguchi. The blowback she faced was immense, and from every sector of Japanese society. It forced a light on the ways legal systems can leave victims like Shiori with little recourse. Shiori became the face of the #MeToo movement in Japan.
Black Box Diaries is the experience of a reporter telling her own story, to find her own resolution. The film ends with a court ruling in her favor, but leaves viewers with a sobering reminder of how harrowing a plaintiff’s experience with the legal system can be.
“No matter where there is a better law to protect survivor, I see every single audience eyes that they are carrying something similar or they know someone they love. I feel it, and it’s really emotional moment every time I go into the theater and feel it. How universal this experience is.”
Nominated for Best Documentary Feature
Each story is from the perspective of someone with a different, yet vital role in the legal system. The reasons behind how people end up in these roles are important. This Oscar season, we hope you enjoy this look inside why people make the decisions they do inside, and outside, the court room.
Interested in more of our Oscar takes? Check out last year’s post on The Barber of Little Rock, Justice Goes to the Movies: CDFIs and the Racial Wealth Gap!