This year our official Oscar submission, Inxeba (The Wound), didn’t make the final selection for Best Foreign Film despite raking in several awards at a number of international film festivals. While the controversial South African drama didn’t make the final hurdle, we’re still cheering on an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved Revolting Rhymes for Best Animated Short thanks to the involvement of local Cape Town-based animation studio, Triggerfish.

Charlize Theron did us proud by winning an Oscar for her transformative performance in Monster. Thanks to a mask of make up and gaining some weight, we got to see her actual performance instead of being mesmerised by the second face in history to launch a thousand ships. Team Tsotsi under Gavin Hood, brought home gold in the Best Foreign Film category – a feat yet to be replicated by a South African film, while District 9 put South Africa on the map for many Americans, who now know it’s not a region but a country… currently in the grips of an alien invasion. While Trevor Noah is making great strides in terms of educating the world about our homeland and South Africans keep getting nostalgic about these iconic Academy Award moments, it’s been a while since we got “the nod” and chalked up a win – in truth we’ve lost touch with the little shiny naked guy.

In order to help local film-makers prepare their movies for Oscar contention, to ensure we back winners instead of whiners and to get South Africa back on the hunt for that golden Oscar, resident movie critic Spling has created a foolproof guide to predicting Oscar winners. These six tips from an insider, will not only improve your guessing game, but could spill the popcorn on how nominees have been getting their foot in the door for decades. Why did some great films get snubbed? Why did it take so long for Leonardo DiCaprio to win? Why did it take Martin Scorsese longer? Who let Seth McFarlane host the Oscars? And when will Meryl’s winning Streep end?

While the prestige, glamour and red carpet treatment serve to obfuscate the behind-the-scenes madness of picking who gets to play with the golden statuette and who needs to work harder, this video will hopefully serve as a precursor to big changes for award seasons of the future. Watch it, learn from it and for crying in a popcorn bucket… don’t laugh at it, the Academy hates comedy, the sound of children playing, #OscarsSoWhite tweets and most recently, Kevin Spacey, who managed to jump out of the closet before his skeleton.