Academy Award for Best Film Editing


The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. For 33 consecutive years, 1981 to 2013, every Best Picture winner had also been nominated for the Film Editing Oscar, and about two thirds of the Best Picture winners have also won for Film Editing. Only the principal, "above the line" editor as listed in the film's credits are named on the award; additional editors, supervising editors, etc. are not currently eligible.
The nominations for this Academy Award are determined by a ballot of the voting members of the Editing Branch of the academy; there were 220 members of the Editing Branch in 2012. The members may vote for up to five of the eligible films in the order of their preference; the five films with the largest vote totals are selected as nominees. The Academy Award itself is selected from the nominated films by a subsequent ballot of all active and life members of the academy. This process is essentially the reverse of that of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts ; nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Editing are done by a general ballot of academy voters, and the winner is selected by members of the editing chapter.
WWW oscars.org

History

This award was first given for films released in 1934. The name of this award is occasionally changed; in 2008, it was listed as the Academy Award for Achievement in Film Editing.
Four film editors have won this award three times in their career:
To date, three film directors have won this award: James Cameron, Alfonso Cuarón, and Sean Baker, for the films Titanic, Gravity, and Anora, respectively. Directors David Lean, Steve James, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Michel Hazanavicius, Jean-Marc Vallée, and Chloé Zhao have been nominated for editing their own films as well, with Cameron, Cuarón, and the Coens each being nominated for the award twice. Also, Best Film Editing winner, Walter Murch, although known for film editing and sound, directed the Oscar nominated Return to Oz, and is, to date, the only person with Oscars for both sound engineering and film editing—winning them in the same year for his work on The English Patient.
Additionally, former film editors Robert Wise, Hal Ashby, and Francis D. Lyon became directors whose films were subsequently nominated for Best Film Editing themselves. These films include Somebody Up There Likes Me, I Want to Live!, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles, and The Andromeda Strain for Wise; Bound for Glory and Coming Home for Ashby; and Crazylegs for Lyon.

Superlatives

Superlatives taken from a document published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Winners and nominees

These listings are based on the Awards Database maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

2000s

Shortlisted finalists

Finalists for Best Film Editing were selected by branch members, who voted for ten finalists which were screened to determine the five nominees.
YearFinalistsRef
1967Bonnie and Clyde, Camelot, The Graduate, Sofi, Thoroughly Modern Millie
1968The Fixer, The Lion in Winter, Rachel, Rachel, Star!, The Thomas Crown Affair
1969Anne of the Thousand Days, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cactus Flower, Gaily, Gaily, Marooned
1970Catch-22, Five Easy Pieces, The Great White Hope, A Man Called Horse, Ryan's Daughter
1971Carnal Knowledge, Fiddler on the Roof, Mary, Queen of Scots, Nicholas and Alexandra, Sunday Bloody Sunday
1972Avanti!, Ben, Butterflies Are Free, Man of La Mancha, 1776
1973The Iceman Cometh, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Paper Chase, Paper Moon, Papillon
1974For Pete's Sake, The Front Page, The Godfather Part II, Hearts and Minds, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
1975Funny Lady, The Hindenburg, The Other Side of the Mountain, Rollerball, The Sunshine Boys
1976King Kong, Midway, The Omen, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Silver Streak
1977Black Sunday, The Deep, The Goodbye Girl, Islands in the Stream, Saturday Night Fever
1978The Brink's Job, Foul Play, Grease, Heaven Can Wait, Hooper
1979The China Syndrome, The Electric Horseman, A Little Romance, Norma Rae, 10

Multiple wins and nominations

The following editors have received multiple nominations for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. This list is sorted by the number of total awards won.