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The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). 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.[1][2] Only the principal, "above the line" editor(s) as listed in the film's credits are named on the award; additional editors, supervising editors, etc. are not currently eligible.[3]
| Academy Award for Best Film Editing | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) |
| First awarded | 1935 |
| Most recent winner | Jennifer Lame Oppenheimer (2023) |
| Website | oscars |
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.[4] 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.[3] 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 (BAFTA); 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.[5]
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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:
- Ralph Dawson won for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Anthony Adverse (1936), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
- Daniel Mandell won for The Pride of the Yankees (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and The Apartment (1960).
- Michael Kahn won for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Schindler's List (1993), and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
- Thelma Schoonmaker won for Raging Bull (1980), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006).
To date, two film directors have won this award: James Cameron and Alfonso Cuarón, for the films Titanic and Gravity, respectively. Directors David Lean, Steve James, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (under the alias "Roderick Jaynes"), Michel Hazanavicius, Jean-Marc Vallée (under the alias "John Mac McMurphy"), 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 (nominee for Citizen Kane), Hal Ashby (winner for In the Heat of the Night), and Francis D. Lyon (co-winner for Body and Soul) 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.
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| Category | Name | Superlative | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most awards | Thelma Schoonmaker | 3 awards[6] | 2006 | Awards resulted from 9 nominations |
| Michael Kahn | 1998 | Awards resulted from 8 nominations | ||
| Daniel Mandell | 1960 | Awards resulted from 5 nominations | ||
| Ralph Dawson | 1938 | Awards resulted from 4 nominations | ||
| Most nominations | Thelma Schoonmaker | 9 nominations | 2023 | Nominations resulted in 3 awards[6] |
| Most nominations without a win | Frederic Knudtson | 6 nominations | 1963 | Nominations resulted in no awards |
| Gerry Hambling | 1996 | |||
| Oldest winner | Michael Kahn | Age 68 | 1998 | |
| Oldest nominee | Thelma Schoonmaker | Age 84 | 2023 | |
| Youngest winner | David Brenner | Age 27 | 1989 | Co-edited with Joe Hutshing[7] |
Superlatives taken from a document published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[8]
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These listings are based on the Awards Database maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[9]
indicates the winner
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
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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 (with the number of total nominations listed in parentheses).
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- BAFTA Award for Best Editing
- Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing
- Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Editing
- American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic
- American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Comedy or Musical
- List of Academy Award–nominated films
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