Best picture winners list: Every single movie to win top Oscar
"Titanic" and "All About Eve" top the list as the most-nominated movies to win best picture, with 14 nods each.
ByAlex Meier
Monday, March 11, 2024
The Academy Awards showered nominations on Christopher Nolan's blockbuster biopic, "Oppenheimer," which came away with a leading 13 noms.
LOS ANGELES -- In the Oscars' nearly 100-year history, the Academy has nominated 601 films for the best picture award.
Some winners, like the comedy-drama "Forrest Gump" (1994), are considered classics. While others, like the psychological horror "Silence of the Lambs" (1991), are trailblazers in their genres.
"Titanic" (1997) and "All About Eve" (1950) top the list as the most-nominated movies to win best picture, with 14 nominations each. "La La Land" (2016) also boasts 14 nods but did not win best picture, even if Warren Beatty's famous faux pas had millions of ceremony viewers briefly believing it had.
"Titanic" is also one of three movies to win a record 11 awards, joined by "Ben-Hur" (1959) and "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" (2003). Yet the latter takes the cake for being the most-nominated movie to win in every single nominated category.
"Gone with the Wind" (1939) was the pioneer for color films, while "Midnight Cowboy" (1969) is the only X-rated film to ever win best picture.
Few sequels are nominated for best picture, and only two have won: "The Godfather Part II" (1974) and "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" (2003).
When "Parasite" won best picture in 2020, it became the first non-English language film to take home the Academy's highest honor. At the time, it was only the second time a non-English language film has made the nominees list. "Grand Illusion" (1938), in French, was the first, "Drive My Car" (2021), in Japanese, made 2021's list, and this year, Germany's "All Quiet on the Western Front" made the cut.
Only three best picture winners were directed by women: Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" (2009), Chloé Zhao's "Nomadland" (2020) and Sian Heder's "CODA" (2021). Woman-directed movies have only made that nominee list 16 times, including "Women Talking," directed by Sarah Polley.
As movie buffs know, winning several awards in other categories does not guarantee best picture success. "Cabaret" (1972) won in eight categories but lost to "The Godfather" for the top prize.
Here are the 96 best picture winners listed in reverse-chronological order.
Please note that the accompanying year indicates when the film was released, not when it won its Oscar:
2020s: Best picture winners
"Oppenheimer" (2023)
"Everything Everywhere All At Once" (2022)
"CODA" (2021)
"Nomadland" (2020)
2010s: Best picture winners
"Parasite" (2019)
"Green Book" (2018)
"The Shape of Water" (2017)
"Moonlight"(2016)
"Spotlight" (2015)
"Birdman" (2014)
"12 Years a Slave" (2013)
"Argo" (2012)
"The Artist" (2011)
"The King's Speech" (2010)
2000s: Best picture winners
"The Hurt Locker" (2009)
"Slumdog Millionaire" (2008)
"No Country for Old Men" (2007)
"The Departed" (2006)
"Crash" (2005)
"Million Dollar Baby" (2004)
"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003)