The recent Oscar Awards turned into a signal moment for Asian and Asian-American filmmakers, with a Chinese director and one of the actors in a film about a struggling Korean-American family taking home top prizes. The significance of the recognition may easily be overblown, writes journalist Yuen-ying Chan of The University of Hong Kong. But, she argues, against the backdrop of the rise of anti-Asian racism in the US since the pandemic, the accolades suggest that Asians in Hollywood are a formidable cultural force to be reckoned with.