Most Outrageous Oscar Snub of 2025: This Star From 97%-Rated Sing Sing Deserved a Nod
It's a shame that this brilliant performance went unnoticed by the Academy.
Sing Sing is the second feature film by director Greg Kwedar, and it has a very unusual fate. In order to make the movie on a shoestring budget, the crew and actors were paid the same.
The script is based on the personal stories of former participants in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Prison.
There are only two professional actors in the cast – Colman Domingo and Paul Raci – but the former inmates are every bit the equal of their more famous colleagues. This is a movie about equality and inner freedom.
Clarence Maclin's Lack of an Acting Oscar Nod Is the Biggest Snub of 2025
It's even more of a shame that of all the actors in Sing Sing, only Colman Domingo received an Oscar nomination. The fact that Clarence Maclin, who plays himself, went unnoticed by the Academy is considered by fans to be the biggest Oscar snub of the year.
Reddit user Lostfox37 wrote:
“If acting is something he wants to keep doing in his life I will watch anything he is in, easy answer as biggest snub.”
Clarence Maclin is the movie's amazing discovery, an actor and ex-con who recalls an earlier version of himself while giving depth to his alter ego, the slightly creepy prison alpha.
Maclin finds the balance that was especially valuable in the New Hollywood era and is no less important today – the balance between artistic expression and the search for life's truth.
What Is Sing Sing About?
John "Divine G" Whitfield is serving time in New York's Sing Sing Prison. He joins the Rehabilitation Through the Arts Program, where inmates form a theater troupe.
Theater is the only way for prisoners to break out of their routines, adjust their behavior, and perhaps discover positive qualities they didn't know they had.
The participants begin to create a production that includes pirates, mummies, Robin Hood and Hamlet – the latter role given to Clarence Maclin, the most rebellious prisoner. He is about to discover the saving power of art.
Sing Sing Is Not Like Any Other Prison Movie Out There
Traditionally, prison dramas tell of the horrors that take place within the walls of grim institutions, and then of the characters' attempts to escape.
In Sing Sing, only a few scenes are reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, Escape from Pretoria and The Mauritanian. This is a completely different movie – warm and hopeful. The characters are not trying to escape from prison, but either to escape from the unfortunate reality or to find inner freedom.