2020 (93rd)

Fox Searchlight Pictures
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Nomadland (2020)
d. Chloe Zhao
Awards: 3
Nominations: 6
A
road-trip drama about the nomadic lifestyle of a modern-day, van-dwelling
migrant in the Great Recession after the 2008 financial collapse.
- 38 year-old director Chloe Zhao was the first woman
of Asian descent (and the first "woman
of color") to be nominated for Best Director and the first Asian
female to win the film-making Oscar
- Zhao also became the second woman to ever win
Best Director at the Academy Awards, following Kathryn Bigelow's win
for The Hurt Locker (2009)
- Zhao also became the third Asian person to win Best
Director, after Ang Lee's two wins for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life
of Pi (2012),
and Bong Joon-ho's win for Parasite (2019).
- Zhao also was
the first woman to ever receive four Oscar nominations in a single
year, and just the 9th person to ever earn that much recognition
in a single ceremony. Her four nominations (with two wins) were
Best Picture (win), Best Director (win), Best Adapted Screenplay, and
Best Film Editing.]
- with actress Frances McDormand's Best Actress Oscar
win for her role as nomadic van-dweller Fern, she became the only actress
in Oscar history to have three Best Actress Oscars - only one other
actress had four (Katharine Hepburn); she even surpassed Meryl Streep
who has only two Best Actress Oscars; McDormand also received
a shared nomination (and win) as co-producer for the film; with her
nomination for this film, she became only the 4th actor to have nominations
across five decades
- McDormand became the first actress nominated for acting and
producing for the same film.
- Nomadland was first film to win both Best
Picture and Best Actress in 16 years [Note: The last
film to score those two awards was Million Dollar Baby (2004).]
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2021 (94th)

Apple Original Films
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CODA (2021)
d. Sian Heder
Awards: 3
Nominations: 3
A
coming-of-age film set in a New England fishing village amongst a mostly-deaf
family (its title was derived from the acronym CODA meaning
'Child of Deaf Adult').
- it was a clean sweep, winning 3 for 3 - it
was only the
seventh Best Picture winner that won every award for which
it was nominated
- it was one of the very few Best Picture winning films
without a nominated Best Director, although the director
won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay. This marked the sixth time
in Oscar history that a film won Best Picture
while omitting the film's director from the Best Director
nominations
- it was also the first film in Oscar history to win Best
Picture with no directing or editing nominations
- the Best Picture Oscar winner was remarkable for having
in its cast a trio of hearing-challenged actors
- CODA was the first film from a streaming company (Apple
Original Films and Apple TV+) to win Best Picture
- CODA was the first movie to debut at Sundance that went
on to win Best Picture
- one of the film's main actors, Best Supporting Actor
Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur, became the first deaf male actor
to win an Oscar .
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