The contenders for the film industry's biggest prizes this year represent a range of genres and styles. But many are united by a common thread: they take on contentious topics with ferocious energy.

A fabulous range of films has been nominated for Academy Awards this year, from a shiny Broadway musical to a fact-based South American drama, from a rollicking farce about a stripper to an impressionistic period piece set in a Florida reform school. From a distance, it might appear as if the Academy's voters had covered just about every genre and mood that cinema has to offer. But when you look closer, it's remarkable how many of the nominees have something in common. In their own distinctive ways, these films take on contemporary issues with enough ferocious energy to make this one of the most political selections in the history of the Oscars.

In the case of The Apprentice, the political aspect is inescapable. Ali Abbasi's film is a controversial biopic of newly inaugurated president Donald Trump, concentrating on his years as an aspiring real-estate mogul in New York. In October, Trump denounced the film as a "cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job". The Academy seems to have liked the film: The Apprentice received two acting nominations, one for Sebastian Stan, who plays Trump himself, and one for Jeremy Strong, who co-stars as his mentor, Roy Cohn.

Other nominees aren't so blatantly political – indeed, many of them are excellent precisely because they approach politics from unexpected angles – but they're hardly timid in making points which could provoke some viewers. The film with the most Oscar nominations this year is Emilia Pérez, a French musical directed by Jacques Audiard. Its 13 nominations include best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay while its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, is the first trans woman to be nominated for the best actress Oscar, which is quite a statement in a week when Trump signed an order declaring that there are only two sexes recognised in the United States and that that they cannot be changed. What's more, its stand-out song and dance number, the Oscar-nominated El Mal, is an angry condemnation of corrupt politicians and other grandees.

I'm Still Here has done startlingly well, too. Walter Salles' Brazilian drama has been nominated not just in the best international........

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