Not Every Best Picture Winner From The 2020s Deserves Equal Praise

Five years into the 2020s, the Academy Awards have handed out their Best Picture trophy five times — and the results have been anything but predictable. From a pandemic-era ceremony that rewrote the rules of eligibility to a sweep that dominated nearly every conversation in Hollywood, this decade’s winners reflect a film industry in genuine transition.

With the 2026 ceremony now in the rearview mirror, it’s worth stepping back and asking a simple question: which of these five winners actually deserved the honor, and which ones will history judge more harshly? The answers might surprise even dedicated Oscar watchers.

What follows is a ranking of the five Best Picture Oscar winners of the 2020s, assessed on their lasting artistic merit, their cultural impact, and whether the Academy got it right.

The Five Best Picture Winners of the 2020s So Far

Before getting into the ranking, it helps to lay out the full field. The 2020s have produced a genuinely diverse set of winners — spanning war drama, historical epic, science fiction spectacle, and intimate character study. No two films on this list feel remotely alike, which makes comparing them both difficult and fascinating.

Here’s a quick reference for all five winners:

Each of these films arrived with its own wave of critical enthusiasm and industry momentum. But momentum at awards season and lasting cinematic value are two very different things.

Ranked From Weakest to Strongest: The Verdict on Each Winner

5. CODA (2022) sits at the bottom of most serious reassessments of this era’s Oscar choices, and with good reason. The film — a heartfelt drama about a hearing child of deaf adults navigating her passion for music — was warmly received on its Apple TV+ release and carried genuine emotional sincerity. But Best Picture? The competition that year included The Power of the Dog and Belfast, films that felt more formally ambitious and more cinematically daring. CODA remains a crowd-pleaser, but it’s widely regarded as one of the weaker Best Picture choices in recent memory.

4. Nomadland (2021) is a more defensible winner, though it too has attracted revisionist skepticism. Chloé Zhao’s quiet, meditative portrait of itinerant life in post-recession America was visually stunning and anchored by a deeply committed performance from Frances McDormand. It won during an unusual pandemic-era ceremony that allowed streaming films to compete on equal footing with theatrical releases. Some critics argue its contemplative pace and lack of conventional narrative structure made it a bold choice; others feel it was rewarded more for its mood than its substance.

3. Oppenheimer (2024) represented something the Oscars don’t always reward: a genuinely massive, technically audacious blockbuster that also had serious things to say. Christopher Nolan’s three-hour account of the creation of the atomic bomb was a commercial phenomenon and a critical triumph, and its Best Picture win felt like the Academy finally catching up with a filmmaker it had long overlooked. Cillian Murphy’s performance anchored a sprawling ensemble. The film is not without flaws — its treatment of certain characters drew criticism — but as a piece of large-scale filmmaking, it’s likely to endure.

2. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2023) was the kind of win that felt genuinely earned and genuinely surprising at the same time. The Daniels — directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — crafted a multiverse action-comedy that somehow also functioned as one of the most emotionally resonant films about immigrant identity and intergenerational grief in years. It swept the ceremony, winning seven Oscars in total, and it did so with a film that defied easy categorization. Five years on, it holds up as one of the most original films to win Best Picture in a long time.

1. Anora (2025) tops this list as the freshest winner and, by many accounts, the most fully realized film of the group. Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning portrait of a young sex worker whose spontaneous marriage to a Russian oligarch’s son unravels in chaotic, darkly comic fashion announced itself as a modern classic almost immediately upon release. Yura Borisov’s performance became one of the most talked-about supporting turns in years. The film’s energy, its refusal to sentimentalize its characters, and its raw, kinetic filmmaking place it in rare company.

What These Winners Say About the Academy Right Now

Taken together, the 2020s Best Picture winners reveal an Academy that is genuinely trying to broaden its tastes — but not always succeeding. The CODA win remains the decade’s most contested choice, a reminder that the voting body can still be swayed by sentiment over craft. The Oppenheimer and Anora wins, by contrast, suggest a willingness to reward films that take real creative risks.

The decade is only half over, and the next five years could produce winners that reshape this list entirely. But right now, the 2020s are shaping up as one of the more interesting — and more debated — eras in Oscar history.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which films won Best Picture at the Oscars in the 2020s?
The five Best Picture winners so far this decade are Nomadland (2021), CODA (2022), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2023), Oppenheimer (2024), and Anora (2025).

Which Best Picture winner from the 2020s is considered the weakest choice?
CODA is widely regarded as the weakest Best Picture winner of the 2020s, with many critics arguing stronger films like The Power of the Dog were more deserving that year.

Did Everything Everywhere All at Once win multiple Oscars?
Yes — the film swept the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, winning seven Oscars in total including Best Picture, Best Director, and multiple acting awards.

Who directed Anora, the most recent Best Picture winner?
Anora was directed by Sean Baker, and the film had previously won the Palme d’Or before taking home the Best Picture Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025.

Was Nomadland a streaming film when it won Best Picture?
Nomadland won during the pandemic-era 93rd Oscars in 2021, a ceremony held under modified eligibility rules that allowed streaming releases to compete alongside theatrical films.