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).]

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 .

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
d. Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Awards: 7
Nominations: 11

A free-wheeling, head-twisting weird domestic drama and comedy (with sci-fi and fantasy elements), about middle-aged, unfulfilled Chinese-American immigrant Evelyn, a laundromat owner who discovered that she had the ability to connect and traverse through time and space into parallel timelines, universes and worlds.

• it was studio A24's highest-grossing film of all time (at approx $74 million domestic) at the time of the Oscars awards
• it was the third film in Oscars history to win three acting awards, following A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976). In addition, it was the first film to win three acting awards and Best Picture
• it was considered the first bona fide science-fiction film to be awarded Best Picture
• the R-rated film won seven top Oscars - Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, and three acting awards
• Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as the two 'Daniels') became the third duo-team of directors to win Best Director
• the film's first-time nominee Michelle Yeoh was the first Asian nominee ever in the Best Actress category, and became the first Asian actress to won the Oscar; she was also only the second non-white performer ever to win the award. [Note: The first was Halle Berry for Monster's Ball (2001).]
• with Michelle Yeoh's many fellow Asian nominees in the film, there was a total of 3 acting nods for its mostly Asian-American cast

Oppenheimer (2023)
d. Christopher Nolan
Awards: 7
Nominations: 13

An ambitious epic and timely dramatic biopic, with a non-linear plotline and flashbacks, about its complex title character J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was known as the "father of the atomic bomb," developed in the Manhattan Project, that helped to bring a quick end to WWII.

• Oppenheimer from Universal Pictures was the top nominated film this year with 13 Oscar nominations; it joined only six other Best Picture-winning films that are now tied for second place with a whopping 13 nominations, behind the top three leaders with 14 nominations
• the film won seven awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey, Jr.), Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Cinematography
• Oppenheimer scored top wins previously at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the BAFTAs, and also had some top wins at the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Awards
• for the first time in 12 years (since The Artist (2011)), the Best Picture and Best Actor Oscars were awarded to the same film; it was the 28th film in Oscar history to win both awards
• Cillian Murphy's Best Actor win for his role as the titular character J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb, made him the first ever Irish-born winner in the category
• the film grossed $329.3 million (domestic) and $958 million (worldwide), becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 2023, the highest-grossing World War II-related film, the highest-grossing biographical film, and the second-highest-grossing R-rated film
• the film featured the first-ever B/W IMAX film stock, to ensure that the B/W portions of the film (the more objective account) would be equal to the color portions (Oppenheimer's own perspective)

Anora (2024)
d. Sean Baker
Awards: 5
Nominations: 6

In this twisted Cinderella fantasy and romantic comedy-drama (and Palme d'Or winner) with an ensemble cast, it told about a 23 year-old Russian-American (Anora or "Ani") working as a Manhattan strip-club lap dancer who was mismatched in a romance with immature, 21 year-old spoiled Ivan (or "Vanya") Zakharov - the spoiled son of a Moscow billionaire oligarch Nikolai Zakharov.

• a truly independent film from Neon, at the time of its Oscar win, it grossed $15.7 million (domestic), and $41 million (worldwide) on a $6 million budget
• it also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in mid-2024; it was the first US film since Tree of Life (2011) to win the top honor; in addition, it became the 4th film in Oscar history to win both awards; the previous Best Picture and Palme d'Or winners were The Lost Weekend (1945), Marty (1955), and Parasite (2019)
• the film's director Sean Baker (who received four nominations for the film) walked away with four Oscars: Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Director, and Best Picture (co-producer shared with Alex Coco and Samantha Quan); Baker became the FIRST filmmaker to win four Academy Awards for the same movie. Baker's feat tied the record held by Walt Disney, but he won Oscars in 1954 for four different films made in 1953.
• in this decade alone (within the last four years), there have been two other Best Picture winners - all independent films - that have performed poorly at the box-office: CODA (2021), and Nomadland (2020)
• Anora was an R-rated Best Picture-winning film, similar to Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022); but it was an unusually explicit film for a Best Picture winner; its opening title screen sequence was set amongst strippers, including the title character Anora, performing lap-dances in a Brooklyn strip club
• as a Best Picture winner, the film set the record for the top film with the most F-words - reportedly 479 uses of the word "f--k" and its variations; there are a few other films with more F-words, but they were not Best Picture Oscar winners; other films with excessive swearing include: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Uncut Gems (2019), Summer of Sam (1999), Casino (1995), Alpha Dog (2006), and Straight Outta Compton (2015).