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 the most prestigious honor of the ceremony.
Roger William Corman was an American film director, producer and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he was known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film.
Richard Darryl Zanuck was an American film producer. His 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He was also instrumental in launching the career of director Steven Spielberg, who described Zanuck as a "director's producer" and "one of the most honorable and loyal men of our profession."
The Independent Spirit Awards, originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards, and later as the Film Independent Spirit Awards, are awards presented annually in Santa Monica, California, to independent filmmakers. Founded in 1984, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986. The ceremony is produced by Film Independent, a not-for-profit arts organization that used to produce the LA Film Festival. Film Independent members vote to determine the winners of the Spirit Awards.
William Todd Field is an American filmmaker and actor. He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022), which were nominated for a combined fourteen Academy Awards. Field has personally received six Academy Award nominations for his films; two for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, one for Best Director, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
Participant Media, LLC was an American independent film and television production company founded in 2004 by Jeffrey Skoll, dedicated to entertainment intended to spur social change. The company financed and co-produced film and television content, as well as digital entertainment through its subsidiary SoulPancake, which the company acquired in 2016.
Morgan J. Freeman is an American film director. In 1997, his debut feature, Hurricane Streets, won three awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American tragicomedy road film directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris from a screenplay written by Michael Arndt. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, all of whom play members of a dysfunctional family taking the youngest (Breslin) to compete in a child beauty pageant. It was produced by Big Beach Films on a budget of US$8 million. Filming began on June 6, 2005, and took place over 30 days in Arizona and Southern California.
Bryan Fogel is an American film director, producer, author, playwright, speaker and human rights activist, best known for the 2017 documentary Icarus, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.
Michael Arndt is an American screenwriter, who has written for the films Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).
Indiewood films are made outside of the Hollywood studio system or traditional arthouse/independent filmmaking system yet managed to be produced, financed and distributed by the two with varying degrees of success and/or failure.
David T. Friendly is an American film producer best known for co-producing the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Brad Krevoy is a film producer, entrepreneur, and founder and chairman/CEO of the Motion Picture Corporation of America. Over his 37-year career, Krevoy has been involved in the production and distribution of more than 250 film and television projects, most notably Dumb and Dumber, and Christmas-themed entertainment, including the A Christmas Prince and The Princess Switch trilogies, as well as Falling for Christmas and Irish Wish.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Our Idiot Brother is a 2011 American comedy-drama film directed by Jesse Peretz and starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer. The script was written by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall based on Jesse and Evgenia Peretz's story, and tells the story of a dimwitted but idealistic and well-meaning man who intrudes and wreaks havoc in his three sisters' lives.
John Sloss is an entertainment lawyer, film sales agent, and manager, who has produced or executive produced over 50 films including the Academy Award-winning The Fog of War, Boys Don't Cry and Boyhood. Other credits include Bernie, City of Hope, Friends with Kids, A Scanner Darkly, Far From Heaven, and Before Sunrise.
Irving Saraf was a Polish-born American film producer, film editor, film director and academic. Saraf won an Oscar for producing the 1991 documentary film, In the Shadow of the Stars. In total, Saraf had more than one hundred fifty film and television production credits. His resume included Poland, Communism's New Look, a 1965 television film; USA Poetry: Twelve Films About Modern Poets in 1966; and the 2009 documentary Empress Hotel following the residents of a low-income hotel in Tenderloin, San Francisco.
Peter Saraf is a film, television and theatre producer. His producer credits include Little Miss Sunshine, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and Loving. He began his career producing with director Jonathan Demme on movies such as Philadelphia (film), Beloved, Adaptation (film), Ulee’s Gold, and the Oscar nominated documentary, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation. He co-founded and co-ran Big Beach (company) with Marc Turtletaub, which he co-ran with Turtletaub for two decades until he exited "quietly" in 2020 after Big Beach moved its headquarters from New York and laid off a number of Saraf's staff. He has been nominated for Oscar, Golden Globe and Tony Awards and won multiple awards including the Spirit, Gotham, and Producers Guild Awards. He was the chair of the PGA East, a Vice President of the PGA, and currently sits on the executive committee of the Producers Branch of the Academy.
Marc Jay Turtletaub is an American film producer and former president and CEO of the Money Store.
CODA is a 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Sian Heder. An English-language remake of the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier, it stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, the child of deaf adults (CODA) and only hearing member of her family, who attempts to help her family's struggling fishing business while pursuing her aspirations to become a singer.
