Most Oscar Winning Original Movies You Can Watch On Netflix

Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards its coveted Oscar to bestow the highest honors in filmmaking. Netflix broke into the Best Picture race for the first time with 2018’s Roma and has since added six more titles to that coveted list of nominees, but has so far failed to secure a win, though Apple TV+ broke the barrier this year, becoming the first streaming service to take home Best Picture for CODA despite Netflix leading the pack in nominations for three years running.

Films produced, streamed, and distributed by Netflix have won 16 Oscars in 11 categories from 116 nominations. These ten feature films are their most lauded.

‘Roma’ was nominated for 10 Oscars and took home 3

Alfonso Cuarón’s striking, semi-autobiographical film Roma examines the life of the live-in housekeeper for an upper middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City.

Roma’s ten nominations tied 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the most-nominated foreign language film while also becoming only the fifth film to be nominated for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film in the same year. Cuarón helped himself to three Oscars at the 91st Academy Awards – for Best Foreign Language Film, the first Mexican film to do so, and then becoming the first person to win both Best Director and Best Cinematography for the same film. Arguably Roma deserved to take home Best Picture as well, but Green Book controversially took it home instead.

‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ nabbed 5 nominations and 2 wins

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom related a pivotal but turbulent 1920s recording session by influential blues singer Ma Rainey, performed by the awesome Viola Davis. Chadwick Boseman played opposite her in what would be his final role.

Davis and Boseman both earned acting nominations, as did the film’s production design. Its wins, however, came from makeup and hairstyling, and costume design for Ann Roth. It was Roth’s fifth nomination and her second win, after 1996’s The English Patient.

‘Marriage Story’ grabs 6 nominations and secures 1 win

Noah Baumbach broke Netflix subscriber’s hearts via Adam Driver’s riveting performance (and to a lesser extent, Scarlett Johansson’s) in 2019’s Marriage Story about the breakup of a relationship.

Marriage Story also fell victim to Parasite’s raging success, losing Best Picture but honored just to have been nominated. Driver got a nomination but lost to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker; Johansson was double nominated for both Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit, but lost out twice, to Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland and Laura Dern, who played her lawyer in Marriage Story and gave the film its single win.

‘Mudbound’ earned 4 nominations, no wins

Dee Rees’ 2017 film Mudbound found two families struggling to survive in the Mississippi Delta – one Black, the other white – sharing the same patch of land and keeping a tenuous, race-based peace. But when their sons Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) and Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) return home from the war with a budding friendship, their peace will be tested by segregation and hatred.

At the 90th Academy Awards, Mudbound had four nominations on the ballot: Best Supporting Actress for Mary J. Blige, Best Adapted Screenplay for Rees and Virgil Williams based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, Best Cinematography for Rachel Morrison, and Best Original Song, again for Blige. Blige became the first person to ever be nominated for both an acting and a song Oscar during the same year. Rees became the first Black woman to nominated for an adapted screenplay. Morrison became the first woman ever to be nominated as a cinematographer. They may not have won, but they did make a lot of history.

‘Icarus,’ ‘American Factory’ and ‘My Octopus Teacher’ net 1 nomination and 1 win each

Netflix has had some luck with its documentary features. Since 2014, they’ve received 11 nominations in the category.

Icarus claimed the first victory in 2018 for revealing Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program. American Factory, the first film to be acquired by Michelle and Barack Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, followed with a win in 2020 for its empathetic and troubling look at the dynamic between workers and employers when a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned GM plant in Ohio, hiring working-class Americans who soon clash with high-tech Chinese industry. They won again in 2021 when My Octopus Teacher chronicled filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild octopus in a South African kelp forest.

‘Don’t Look Up’ scored 4 nominations, 0 wins

In 2021, writer-director Adam McKay blessed Netflix viewers with a political satire/black comedy with an incredible ensemble cast, including Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothee Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep. It told the story of two astronomers warning the world about its impending demise thanks to an approaching comet. The world, however, remained largely apathetic, an on-the-nose allegory for humanity’s current response to climate change.

The film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, but the Academy saw fit to bestow four nominations upon it, including a coveted, all-important nomination for Best Picture, which it lost to CODA. It lost Best Original Screenplay to Kenneth Branagh for Belfast, Best Original Score to Hans Zimmer for Dune, and Best Film Editing to Joe Walker, also for Dune.

‘The Trial Of The Chicago 7’ earned 6 nominations, no wins

Aaron Sorkin’s 2020 film The Trial Of The Chicago 7 told the story of the seven people charged in the wake of protestors’ violent confrontations with police in the wake of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention. They were forced to stand trial together by a hostile Nixon administration and a volatile judge despite their differing defense philosophies and that one of them, Black Panther Bobby Seale, wasn’t even there.

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture at the 93rd Academy Awards, which it lost to Nomadland. Sorkin, predictably, earned himself a fourth Oscar nomination for his screenplays, though his only win came from 2010’s The Social Network; this time he lost to Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman.

‘The Irishman’ accrued 10 nominations but no wins

Martin Scorsese’s epic film The Irishman stars Robert DeNiro as a hitman looking back on his life as Scorsese meditates on the excess of sin and the state of his soul. The incredible cast includes Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, and Harvey Keitel.

The 92nd Academy Awards recognized The Irishman with all the biggest nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor nominations for both Pacino and Pesci. Brad Pitt bested them both for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and Parasite swept the others, though when Bong Joon-ho accepted his Oscar for Best Director, he said “When I was young and studying cinema, there was a saying that I carved deep into my heart, which is, ‘the most personal is the most creative,’” which he then attributed to Scorsese, prompting a standing ovation for the prolific director.

‘The Power Of The Dog’ earns a whopping 12 nominations but wins only once

The Power Of The Dog seemed likely to break Netflix’s Best Picture curse, leading the pack with an impressive twelve nominations. Director Jane Campion’s beautiful film about a fearsome rancher (Benedict Cumberbatch) who torments his brother’s (Jesse Plemons) new wife (Kirsten Dunst) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

With twelve nominations locked up, Netflix was likely confident that its Best Picture drought was about to end. In fact, it was CODA that won the first Best Picture Oscar for a streaming platform at the 94th Academy Awards; its three nominations were the fewest of any Best Picture winner since 1932. The Power Of The Dog’s sole win came courtesy of Best Director, the first film to do so as its sole award since 1967’s The Graduate. Winner Jane Campion was only the third woman to win for direction and was the first woman to be nominated twice, having previously been nominated in 1993 for The Piano.

‘Mank’ gets 10 nominations and 2 wins

David Fincher’s black and white biopic based on his father Jack’s script recounted screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and his development of his groundbreaking script for Citizen Kane.

Mank was losing Best Picture to Nomadland right around the same time The Trial Of The Chicago 7 was. It did, however, come away with a Best Cinematography win for Erik Messerschmidt on his first Oscar nomination ever, and for Production Design. Oldman and Amanda Seyfried both lost their acting nominations.