The 2010s and early 2020s transformed the Oscars, as Best Picture winners ranged from prestige period dramas and black‑and‑white tributes to silent film to groundbreaking international hits and streaming‑era breakthroughs.
This era spans everything from royal biopics and newsroom procedurals to multiverse adventures and a South Korean Palme d’Or winner rewriting Academy history. Below is a year‑by‑year guide to every Best Picture Oscar winner from 2010 to 2024, with story highlights, box‑office context and key awards milestones.
The King’s Speech (2010) is a historical drama directed by Tom Hooper. Colin Firth plays Prince Albert, the future King George VI, who battles a debilitating stammer with the help of unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) as he prepares for a crucial wartime radio address.
Made for about £8 million, the film earned more than £250 million worldwide and was praised for its performances, visual style, art direction and score.
At the 83rd Academy Awards it led the field with 12 nominations and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor for Firth.
The Artist (2011) is a French comedy‑drama shot in black‑and‑white and largely silent, directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Set in Hollywood between 1927 and 1932, it follows silent star George Valentin and rising actress Peppy Miller as the arrival of sound cinema threatens his career and boosts hers.
Premiering at Cannes, where Jean Dujardin won Best Actor, the film received widespread acclaim and numerous festival awards.
It went on to earn 10 Oscar nominations and win five, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, making Dujardin the first French actor to win the category and The Artist the first French‑produced film ever to take Best Picture.
Argo (2012) is an espionage thriller directed by and starring Ben Affleck. Adapted from CIA operative Tony Mendez’s memoir The Master of Disguise and a Wired article, it dramatizes the “Canadian Caper,” in which Mendez rescues six U.S. diplomats from Tehran by posing as a sci‑fi film producer during the Iran hostage crisis.
The film grossed about 232 million dollars worldwide and was praised for its suspenseful direction, period detail and blend of tension and dark humor.
At the 85th Academy Awards it received seven nominations and won three—Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing—while also taking top honors at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes.
12 Years a Slave (2013) is a biographical historical drama directed by Steve McQueen, from a screenplay by John Ridley based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir. It tells the true story of Northup, a free Black man kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana for twelve years.
The film earned more than 187 million dollars worldwide on a 22‑million budget and was widely hailed as one of the year’s finest films.
It received nine Oscar nominations and won three: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o). McQueen became the first Black British producer to win Best Picture, and the film also claimed the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Film.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) is a black comedy‑drama directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Michael Keaton plays a washed‑up superhero movie star trying to reinvent himself by staging a serious Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver, all while wrestling with family troubles, ego and a mocking inner voice.
Shot and edited to appear as if it unfolds in a single continuous take, the film grossed more than 103 million dollars worldwide and drew praise for its ambitious camerawork, performances and screenplay.
Birdman received nine Oscar nominations and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography, tying The Grand Budapest Hotel for the most wins of the night.
Spotlight (2015) is a biographical drama directed by Tom McCarthy about The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigative team. It chronicles how the reporters uncovered a decades‑long cover‑up of systemic child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Grounded in the Globe’s Pulitzer‑winning reporting, the film was praised for its ensemble cast, procedural realism and restrained, journalistic tone.
It earned six Oscar nominations and won two—Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay—making it the first Best Picture winner since The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) to win only one additional Oscar.
Moonlight (2016) is a coming‑of‑age drama written and directed by Barry Jenkins, adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Told in three chapters, it follows Chiron, a Black boy growing up in Miami, as he navigates questions of identity, masculinity and sexuality.
Widely cited as one of the best films of the 21st century, it received eight Oscar nominations.
Moonlight won three Oscars—Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) and Best Adapted Screenplay—and became the first film with an all‑Black cast and the first LGBTQ‑themed film to win Best Picture; Ali’s award marked the first acting Oscar for a Muslim performer.
The Shape of Water (2017) is a period romantic dark fantasy directed and produced by Guillermo del Toro, co‑written with Vanessa Taylor. Set in 1962 Baltimore, it follows Elisa, a mute janitor at a government lab, who falls in love with an amphibious humanoid creature held there and plots his escape from a sadistic colonel.
Named one of AFI’s top ten films of 2017, it led the 90th Oscars with 13 nominations.
The film won four Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score and Best Production Design—and became only the second fantasy film, after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, to win Best Picture.
Green Book (2018) is a biographical comedy‑drama directed by Peter Farrelly. Set in 1962, it chronicles a concert tour through the Deep South by Black pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his Italian American driver and bodyguard Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), named after the Negro Motorist Green Book travel guide.
Drawing on interviews and letters, the film became a box‑office success and a major awards‑season presence.
It won three Oscars—Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Ali)—and also took the Producers Guild’s top prize, the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and multiple SAG and BAFTA honors for Ali.
Parasite (2019) is a South Korean black comedy thriller directed by Bong Joon Ho. It follows a poor family that gradually infiltrates the home of a wealthy family through forged credentials and deception, leading to increasingly dark and violent consequences.
The film premiered at Cannes, where it became the first Korean movie to win the Palme d’Or, and went on to gross about 258 million dollars worldwide on a modest budget.
At the 92nd Oscars it made history as the first non‑English‑language film to win Best Picture, also taking Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film; it is one of only a few titles ever to win both the Palme d’Or and Best Picture.
Nomadland (2020) is a drama written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao, adapted from Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty‑First Century. Frances McDormand plays a widow who adopts a nomadic lifestyle, traveling across the American West in her van alongside real‑life nomads playing versions of themselves.
The film received six Oscar nominations and won three: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (McDormand).
Zhao became the second woman and first Asian woman to win Best Director, as well as the first person nominated in four categories for the same film, while McDormand became the first woman to win Oscars for both acting and producing on a single movie.
CODA (2021) is a coming‑of‑age comedy‑drama written and directed by Sian Heder, adapted from the French‑Belgian film La Famille Bélier. It stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, the hearing daughter of deaf parents, who must balance supporting her family’s struggling fishing business with her dream of becoming a singer.
The film received three Oscar nominations and won all three—Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur) and Best Adapted Screenplay—making it the seventh Best Picture winner to go undefeated in its categories.
CODA became the first Best Picture winner released by a streaming service (Apple TV+), and Kotsur became the first male deaf actor to win an Oscar and a BAFTA.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) is an independent absurdist comedy‑drama written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American immigrant who discovers she must tap into alternate‑universe versions of herself to save the multiverse while being audited by the IRS.
Made for roughly 14–25 million dollars, the film grossed about 143 million worldwide and became A24’s highest‑grossing release.
At the 95th Oscars it won seven of 11 nominations—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing—making it one of the most‑awarded Best Picture winners since Slumdog Millionaire.
Oppenheimer (2023) is an epic biographical drama written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus. It chronicles the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his central role in developing the atomic bomb during World War II.
The film became a major critical and commercial success and dominated the 2023 awards season.
At the Oscars it was nominated for 13 awards and won seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), alongside multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA wins for Best Film.
Anora (2024) is a romantic comedy‑drama written, directed, produced and edited by Sean Baker. Mikey Madison stars as Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a New York stripper who impulsively marries the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch, only to face fierce resistance from his powerful family.
The film premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or, and went on to gross about 59 million dollars worldwide on a 6‑million budget—Baker’s highest‑earning film to date.
At the 97th Academy Awards Anora received six nominations and won five: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Madison), Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing, joining a small group of Palme d’Or winners—including Marty and Parasite—that also claimed Best Picture.
From the prestige comforts of The King’s Speech and the silent‑era homage of The Artist to the historic breakthrough of Parasite and the streaming triumph of CODA, the 2010–2024 Best Picture winners chart the Academy’s uneasy but undeniable shift into a global, platform‑agnostic film landscape.
By the time Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer and Anora took the top prize, the Oscars had fully embraced multiverse storytelling, international auteurs and streamer‑backed releases as central to what “Best Picture” means in the 21st‑century movie ecosystem.
