Oscar Winners: Best Picture and Academy Award History

A year-by-year record of Academy Award winners, with trailers for the films that took home Best Picture and the major acting prizes.

Best Picture winners

  1. One Battle After Another (2025)

    98th Academy Awards (2026) · Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Casting

    A washed-up former revolutionary living off-grid with his daughter is forced back into action when an old enemy resurfaces and she goes missing.

  2. Anora (2024)

    97th Academy Awards (2025) · Directed by Sean Baker

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

    A young Brooklyn sex worker impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and his family sets out to have the marriage annulled.

  3. Oppenheimer (2023)

    96th Academy Awards (2024) · Directed by Christopher Nolan

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

    The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and the political fallout that defined the nuclear age.

  4. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

    95th Academy Awards (2023) · Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Daniels), Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

    An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save existence by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.

  5. Parasite (2019)

    92nd Academy Awards (2020) · Directed by Bong Joon-ho

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film

    All unemployed, Ki-taek’s family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

  6. CODA (2021)

    94th Academy Awards (2022) · Directed by Siân Heder

    Won: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur), Best Adapted Screenplay

    As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Ruby is the only hearing person in her home. When she discovers a passion for singing, she must choose between family obligations and her dreams.

  7. Nomadland (2020)

    93rd Academy Awards (2021) · Directed by Chloé Zhao

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Chloé Zhao), Best Actress (Frances McDormand)

    A woman in her sixties, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

  8. Green Book (2018)

    91st Academy Awards (2019) · Directed by Peter Farrelly

    Won: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Best Original Screenplay

    A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

  9. The Shape of Water (2017)

    90th Academy Awards (2018) · Directed by Guillermo del Toro

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Guillermo del Toro), Best Production Design, Best Original Score

    At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature being held in captivity.

  10. Moonlight (2016)

    89th Academy Awards (2017) · Directed by Barry Jenkins

    Won: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Best Adapted Screenplay

    A chronicle of the childhood, adolescence and burgeoning adulthood of a young Black man growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.

  11. Spotlight (2015)

    88th Academy Awards (2016) · Directed by Tom McCarthy

    Won: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay

    The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child abuse and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese.

  12. Birdman (2014)

    87th Academy Awards (2015) · Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

    Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography

    A washed-up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production.

  13. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

    86th Academy Awards (2014) · Directed by Steve McQueen

    Won: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o), Best Adapted Screenplay

    In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

  14. Gladiator (2000)

    73rd Academy Awards (2001) · Directed by Ridley Scott

    Won: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects

    A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.

  15. Titanic (1997)

    70th Academy Awards (1998) · Directed by James Cameron

    Won: Best Picture (Record 11 Oscars), Best Director (James Cameron), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

    A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

  16. Schindler's List (1993)

    66th Academy Awards (1994) · Directed by Steven Spielberg

    Won: Best Picture (7 Oscars), Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction

    In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution.

  17. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

    64th Academy Awards (1992) · Directed by Jonathan Demme

    Won: The Big Five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Adapted Screenplay

    A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer.

  18. The Godfather (1972)

    45th Academy Awards (1973) · Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

    Won: Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best Adapted Screenplay

    The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant youngest son.

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