Netflix picked up big wins at the 95th Academy Awards, including the international feature film Oscar for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and its first animated feature film Oscar for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.”
Overall, Netflix won six Oscars on Sunday, after receiving 16 total nominations this year. Among distributors and studios, that trailed only A24, which had nine — including seven for the night’s juggernaut, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” directed by Edward Berger, won four Oscars (on nine nominations), picking up the trophies for international feature, cinematography (James Friend), original score (Volker Bertelmann) and production design (Christian M. Goldbeck, Ernestine Hipper). The film — a grim, disquieting adaptation of the famous World War I novel — had dominated the U.K.’s BAFTA Awards with a record-breaking seven wins, including best film, director (Berger), adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, original score and non-English language film.
Popular on Variety
Del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” a stop-motion adaptation of the classic fairy tale, beat out the four other contenders in the category, including Netflix’s “The Sea Beast,” A24’s “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” Universal-DreamWorks Animation’s “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and Disney-Pixar’s “Turning Red.”
Netflix also won in the documentary short film category for “The Elephant Whisperers,” which follows Bomman and Bellie, an Indigenous couple in south India, who devote their lives to caring for an orphaned baby elephant named Raghu. Director Kartiki Gonsalves spent five years chronicling Bomman and Bellie for the documentary.
Previously, Netflix had won 16 Oscars (out of 116 nominations) and has mounted aggressive awards-season campaigns the last several years. But to date it’s been unable to score a win on the best picture front; this year, “All Quiet on the Western Front” was nominated in the category, which went to “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
At the 2022 Oscars, Netflix came away with just one trophy: Jane Campion’s win for directing “The Power of the Dog.” That was after Netflix had led the field with 27 nominations, including 12 for “Power of the Dog” and four for Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” (both of which were in the running for best picture).
In 2021, Netflix won seven Oscars, more than any other studio that year. That included two each for David Fincher’s “Mank” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” adapted from the play by August Wilson. In 2020, Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” was shut out at the Oscars after receiving 10 nominations. Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” won three Academy Awards in 2019, for directing, cinematography and foreign language film.
