Academy Award for Best Picture and Related Topics

Sydney Pollack

American film director, producer and actor.

For his film Out of Africa (1985), Pollack won the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture.

Academy Awards

The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry.

Plaster War-time Oscar plaque (1943), State Central Museum of Cinema, Moscow (ru)

The Academy Award statuette (the "Oscar")

31st Academy Awards Presentations,
Pantages Theatre, Hollywood, 1959

81st Academy Awards Presentations,
Dolby Theatre, Hollywood, 2009

From 1973 to 2020, all Academy Awards ceremonies have ended with the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Anthony Minghella

British film director, playwright and screenwriter.

In addition, he received three more Academy Award nominations; he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both The English Patient (1996) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and was posthumously nominated for Best Picture for The Reader (2008), as a co-producer.

William A. Wellman

American film director known for his work in crime, adventure, and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion.

Wellman and Celia, his Nieuport 24 fighter, c. 1917 (one of several aircraft named for his mother)

Wellman in a captured German Rumpler (image from his 1918 account Go Get Em!...)

Wellman as a flight instructor at Rockwell Field, 1919

In 1927, Wellman directed Wings, which became the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.

Dolby Theatre

Live-performance auditorium in the Ovation Hollywood shopping mall and entertainment complex, on Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

A 2016 photo of the Art Deco column displaying the 2012 to 2015 recipients of the Academy Award for Best Picture at the bottom, and blank spaces at the top for the then-yet-to-be-determined 2016 and 2017 winners

The Grand Staircase leading up to the Dolby Theatre

The hall from the front entrance to the grand stairway (leading up to the theater at the rear of the shopping complex) is flanked by storefronts, as well as Art Deco columns displaying the names of past recipients of the Academy Award for Best Picture (with blank spaces left for future Best Picture winners, currently set up to 2071).

Wings (1927 film)

1927 and 1929 American silent war film set during World War I, produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman, released by Paramount Pictures, and starring Clara Bow, Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen.

Director William A. Wellman was an experienced pilot himself

A Thomas-Morse MB-3 at Selfridge Field, one of the types of planes used in the film

Richard Arlen and Charles Rogers in the famous gay kiss scene.

Poster variation with open header space for customizing a theater's promotion of film

It went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture at the first Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award ceremony in 1929, the only fully silent film to do so.

Shakespeare in Love

1998 romantic period comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard, and produced by Harvey Weinstein.

The film received numerous accolades, including seven Oscars at the 71st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench), and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Academy Award for Best Director

Award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

Frank Borzage won in the "Dramatic" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for Bad Girl.

Lewis Milestone won in the "Comedy" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for All Quiet on the Western Front.

Frank Lloyd won two awards in this category for The Divine Lady and Cavalcade.

Frank Capra won three awards in this category, for It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and You Can't Take It with You.

John Ford has the most Best Director wins with four, winning in 1935, 1940, 1941, and 1952.

William Wyler has the most nominations with twelve, winning in 1942, 1946, and 1959.

Michael Curtiz won for directing Casablanca.

Billy Wilder (right) was nominated eight times, winning for The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Apartment (1960).

Elia Kazan won in 1947 for Gentleman's Agreement and again in 1954 for On the Waterfront.

John Huston received the award in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz won back to back Oscars for, A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950)

George Stevens won for A Place in the Sun and Giant.

Fred Zinnemann won for From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons

David Lean won for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia

Robert Wise, co-won with Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), and solo for The Sound of Music (1965)

George Cukor won in 1964 for My Fair Lady.

Mike Nichols won for 1967's The Graduate.

William Friedkin won in 1971 for The French Connection.

Francis Ford Coppola earned the award for The Godfather Part II.

Miloš Forman won for both 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and 1984's Amadeus.

Woody Allen received seven nominations in the category, winning for Annie Hall in 1977.

Warren Beatty won in 1981 for directing Reds.

Richard Attenborough won in 1982 for his epic biopic, Gandhi.

Sydney Pollack won for Out of Africa in 1985

Oliver Stone earned two awards in this category in the 1980s—one for Platoon (1986), and the other for Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

Jonathan Demme won for The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Clint Eastwood won for Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Steven Spielberg won for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Sam Mendes won for his directorial debut, American Beauty (1999)

Peter Jackson won for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Ang Lee became the first Asian director to win for Brokeback Mountain (2005). He won again for Life of Pi (2012)

Martin Scorsese won once from nine nominations for The Departed in 2006.

Joel and Ethan Coen won for No Country for Old Men (2007).

Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win Best Director. She won for The Hurt Locker in 2009.

Alfonso Cuarón became the first Mexican director to win this award for Gravity (2013). He won again for Roma (2018).

Alejandro G. Iñárritu won in consecutive years for directing Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), the third director to accomplish this and the first since 1950.

Damien Chazelle became the youngest Best Director winner for La La Land (2016).

Guillermo del Toro won for The Shape of Water (2017).

Bong Joon-ho became the first South Korean winner for Parasite (2019)

Chloe Zhao became the second woman (and first one of color) to win the Best Director honor for Nomadland (2020).

The Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history.

Theatrical release poster by Dave Christensen

Driving Miss Daisy

1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and written by Alfred Uhry, based on Uhry's 1987 play of the same name.

Driving Miss Daisy was a critical and commercial success upon its release and at the 62nd Academy Awards received nine nominations, and won four: Best Picture, Best Actress (for Tandy), Best Makeup, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures.

Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study building on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California

Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in the Hollywood district

In 2020, Parasite became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture.