The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered as the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.
Lorraine Bracco is an American actress best known for her performances as psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi on the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos (1999–2007), and for her breakthrough role portraying Karen Hill, in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas (1990). Her performance as Meryl in Waheed AlQawasmi's debut film Jacir (2023) was critically acclaimed. Bracco began her career modeling in France and appeared in Italian-language films in the 1980s. Her English-language debut came in The Pick-up Artist (1987), which was followed by roles in Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Sing (1989), and The Dream Team (1989). She has been nominated for an Academy Award, four Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best of 2000 in film and took place on March 25, 2001, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and was directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Steve Martin hosted the show for the first time. Three weeks earlier in a ceremony at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California held on March 3, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Renée Zellweger.
Taraji Penda Henson is an American actress. She has received several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards.
Octavia Lenora Spencer is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award, and is the first black actress to receive two consecutive Oscar nominations.
Theodore Asenov Ushev is a Bulgarian animator, film director and screenwriter based in Montreal. He is best known for his work at the National Film Board of Canada, including the 2016 animated short Blind Vaysha, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
Kimberly Pita Quinn is an American actress, writer and film producer. She made her film debut playing a leading role and co-writing in the 1999 independent drama film Winding Roads. Quinn later produced and played supporting roles in a number of films, include St. Vincent (2014), Hidden Figures (2016), and The Starling (2020). She is married to director Theodore Melfi, together they own production company Goldenlight Films.
The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2016, and took place on February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, at 5:30 p.m. PST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd and directed by Glenn Weiss. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the ceremony for the first time.
Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about three female African-American mathematicians: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked at NASA during the Space Race. Other stars include Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell.
Margot Lee Shetterly is an American nonfiction writer who has also worked in investment banking and media startups. Her first book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), is about African-American women mathematicians working at NASA who were instrumental to the success of the United States space program. She sold the movie rights while still working on the book, and it was adapted as a feature film of the same name, Hidden Figures (2016). For several years Shetterly and her husband lived and worked in Mexico, where they founded and published Inside Mexico, a magazine directed to English-speaking readers.
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race is a 2016 nonfiction book written by Margot Lee Shetterly. Shetterly started working on the book in 2010. The book takes place from the 1930s through the 1960s, depicting the particular barriers for Black women in science during this time, thereby providing a lesser-known history of NASA. The biographical text follows the lives of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians who worked as computers at NACA and NASA, during the space race. They overcame discrimination there, as women and as African Americans. Also featured is Christine Darden, who was the first African-American woman to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service for her work in researching supersonic flight and sonic booms.
Allison Schroeder is an American screenwriter. She co-wrote the film Hidden Figures with Theodore Melfi, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Jenno Topping is an American film producer. Films she has produced include Dr. Dolittle (1998), Charlie's Angels (2000), St. Vincent (2014), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) and Hidden Figures (2016), which earned her an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination with Donna Gigliotti, Peter Chernin, Pharrell Williams, and Theodore Melfi, and again in 2020 at the 92nd Academy Awards for the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari, along with Chernin and James Mangold.
Benjamin Mark Lasker Wallfisch is a British composer, conductor, orchestrator, and record producer, known for his work on film scores. He has contributed over 75 feature films since the mid-2000s, including notable works like Blade Runner 2049, Shazam!, It, It Chapter Two, The Invisible Man, Hidden Figures, A Cure for Wellness and The Flash.
El Camino Christmas is a 2017 American comedy film directed by David E. Talbert and written by Theodore Melfi and Christopher Wehner. The film stars Luke Grimes, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dax Shepard, Kurtwood Smith, Michelle Mylett, Emilio Rivera, Kimberly Quinn, Jessica Alba, Tim Allen and Jimmy O. Yang. The film was released on Netflix on December 8, 2017.
The Starling is a 2021 American fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Matt Harris. The film stars Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Timothy Olyphant, Kim Quinn, Skyler Gisondo, Loretta Devine, Ravi Kapoor, Daveed Diggs, Rosalind Chao, Laura Harrier, and Kevin Kline.
Winding Roads is a 1999 American independent drama film produced and directed by Theodore Melfi in his feature directorial debut. Melfi wrote the screenplay with his future wife, actress Kimberly Quinn, who stars in the film with Katrina Holden Bronson and Rachel Hunter. James Marsters, Adam Scott, Michael Weatherly and Carlos Gómez co-star. The story centers on three women, all best friends, navigating their respective love lives.
