Best Picture Winners Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Clint Eastwood's 2004 film about a gruff Los Angeles boxing trainer and the determined waitress he reluctantly takes on won four Oscars, including his second Best Director.

Question 2

This 1970 war film opens with the general at its center giving a speech in front of an enormous American flag. Its star, George C. Scott, refused the Best Actor Oscar, calling the ceremony a 'meat parade.'

Question 3

Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic life story of the leader of India's nonviolent independence movement won eight Oscars, including Best Actor for Ben Kingsley in the title role.

Question 4

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2014 film, edited to look like one long, unbroken shot, follows a washed-up Hollywood actor known for playing a superhero as he risks everything on a serious Broadway play.

Question 5

This 1989 film about the difficult, decades-long friendship between an elderly Southern Jewish widow and her Black driver won Best Picture, though its director was not even nominated.

Question 6

Released during the civil rights era, this 1967 film about a Black Philadelphia homicide detective, played by Sidney Poitier, solving a murder in a hostile Mississippi town won five Oscars.

Question 7

William Wyler's 1959 Roman epic, built around a nine-minute chariot race, was the first film to win 11 Academy Awards. Its total of 11 wins stood alone for nearly four decades before Titanic matched it, and the chariot race is still one of the most famous action scenes ever staged.

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About Best Picture Winners

The Academy Award for Best Picture has been handed out every year since 1929, and its winners trace the whole history of the movies. The silent era closed with Wings; the studio age produced It Happened One Night, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and Hamlet, the first British film to win. The 1950s and 1960s ran to spectacle: Ben-Hur, the first film to win 11 Oscars, plus Lawrence of Arabia, West Side Story and The Sound of Music. The 1970s brought the New Hollywood of The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, the first sequel to win, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The record book is full of firsts and near-misses. Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King share the mark of 11 Oscars, and Return of the King won every category it was nominated in. It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs swept the "big five." Rebecca is Alfred Hitchcock's only Best Picture winner. Wings and The Artist, 83 years apart, are the silent winners. Parasite in 2020 was the first film not in English to win; CODA in 2022 the first from a streaming service.

Some winners are remembered as much for controversy: The Greatest Show on Earth over High Noon, How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, Crash over Brokeback Mountain, and the 2017 night the wrong film, La La Land, was read out before Moonlight was corrected on stage.

Every answer in this quiz is a film that won Best Picture. The clue gives you the year, the director, the stars and a memorable fact, and 25 of the questions add a photo of a key figure. Read the clue, pick the winner, and get the full story after each answer.