Skip to content
Curated playlist

Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award

  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingMany stars turned down Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring. Sean Connery said he did not understand the plot.
  • Ben-Hur (1959 film)MGM bet its future on Ben-Hur, a 1959 epic whose budget more than doubled to $15.175 million.
  • Oppenheimer (film)The teaser for the film Oppenheimer, released on the 28th of July 2022, carried a live countdown to 5:29 a.m. Mountain time on the 16th of July 2023. That hour marked the 78th anniversary of the first detonation of an atomic weapon.…
  • Apocalypse NowFrancis Ford Coppola bet his house and car on Apocalypse Now. He also put up his Godfather profits as security.
  • InceptionInception's crew built a hotel corridor that rotated a full 360 degrees. It was planned at 40 feet, then grew to 100.
  • Gone with the Wind (film)Hattie McDaniel was barred from the premiere of Gone with the Wind by Jim Crow laws, then won an Oscar.
  • Dune (2021 film)Dune, the 2021 film directed by Denis Villeneuve, began with a filmmaker who doubted he would ever get to make it. In September 2016 the Canadian director said, "a longstanding dream of mine is to adapt Dune, but it's a long process to get…
  • Avatar (2009 film)Avatar, the 2009 science fiction film from director James Cameron, began with a dream he had when he was 19 years old. In the dream, he saw a bioluminescent forest. Its trees were made of fiber-optic strands, fan lizards moved through the…
  • Titanic (1997 film)Rather than cut Titanic, James Cameron gave up his $8 million director's salary.
  • Sinners (2025 film)Sinners is a 2025 horror film from the writer, director and producer Ryan Coogler. It opens with someone describing a kind of music 'so pure it can pierce the veil between life and death, past and future.' The film then spends the rest of…
  • Glory (1989 film)The film Glory shows a soldier being flogged, but no such flogging of Black troops ever happened.
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film)Hal Mohr won a cinematography Oscar for the 1935 film A Midsummer Night's Dream without being nominated.

Queue