Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (2025)

The 92nd annual Academy Awards ceremony was one for the record books: Bong Joon-ho’s comic drama Parasite won Best Picture and Best Director, among other awards, making the film the first foreign language movie to ever win the top award, and the first South Korean feature movie to be recognized at the Oscars.

The unusually short, tight ceremony went off without a host and with minimal hitches, but it came with an unusual number of references to the all-male roster of Best Director nominees, and the overall lack of diversity in the nominee pool. Parasite’s win ended up feeling like a triumph for international cinema, and for multiculturalism in art.

Join us as we run down the 2020 Oscar, surveying the nominated shorts and features, considering what led to this moment, and recapping the wins, losses, and highlights of this year’s Academy Awards.

  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (1)

    Karen Han

    Parasite’s Best Picture win was key to the Oscars’ future

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (2)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (3)

    Photo: Rachel Luna/Getty Images

    In the lead-up to the Oscars, the sheer number of nominations Bong Joon-ho’s social satire Parasite received seemed like a miracle. The Academy Awards had never previously recognized South Korean films. (Lee Chang-dong’s magnificent Burning made the Oscar shortlist in 2018, but ultimately wasn’t a nominee.) And no non-English-language film had ever taken Best Picture in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards. A win in the Best Foreign Language Film category (recently renamed as “Best International Feature Film”) had historically been the cap. Add in the fact that Sam Mendes’ 1917 spent awards season picking up steam as a technical marvel, and it seemed as though Parasite’s Best Picture chances were slim. Even though it truly was the best picture of 2019, it was competing in an awards show that was historically skewed against it.

    Which made it all the more miraculous that Parasite ended the night with not only the prizes for Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, and Best Director, but for Best Picture, too.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (4)

    Petrana RadulovicandKaren Han

    The biggest moments from last night’s Oscars

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (5)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (6)

    Photo: Mark Ralson/AFP via Getty Images

    The 2020 Oscars are done, but the screenshots and viral videos will live on. This year’s Academy Awards were full of highs (Parasite for Best Director and Best Picture) and some humdrum lows. (Remember Eminem? Here he is with a surprise performance of his 2003 Oscar-winner “Lose Yourself.”) As usual, the ceremony covered the full gamut of human emotion, with the winners and audience displaying everything from shock to excitement to seeming revulsion to naked vulnerability.

    For those who missed the broadcast, or just want to relive the show’s most entertaining moments, we’ve rounded up the funniest, strangest, sharpest, and most satisfying events at the 92nd Oscars ceremony.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (7)

    Karen Han

    Parasite wins Best Picture and makes Oscar history

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (8)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (9)

    Image: Neon/CJ Entertainment via Polygon

    Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards, making history as the first foreign-language film to take home the night’s biggest prize, as well as the first South Korean film to receive Academy Award recognition. The award came after Parasite also took home the prizes for Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, and Best Director.

    Parasite has been riding a hot streak ever since premiering at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it took home the Palme d’Or in a unanimous decision from the jury. It also won Best Foreign Language Film at the 77th Golden Globes as well as Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Original Screenplay at the 73rd BAFTAs, and became the first non-English film to win the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (10)

    Matt Patches

    Joaquin Phoenix becomes second Joker to win an Oscar

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (11)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (12)

    Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via Polygon

    Forget the days of the Oscars’ comic-book-movie stigma: Joaquin Phoenix just won Best Actor for a Joker origin story.

    After winning big at the Venice Film Festival, then commanding the awards season right through the Golden Globes, Joker has taken its last laugh by delivering an Academy Award to its leading man. We’ve come along way from . Black Panther and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse broke the curse, and now Joker has again mainstreamed the legitimacy of comic-book movies. Phoenix took it seriously, and so did the voters.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (13)

    Petrana Radulovic

    Frozen 2’s ‘Into the Unknown’ gets a sweeping multilingual Oscar performance with 10 Elsas

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    Frozen 2’s only Oscar nomination is for “Into the Unknown” for Best Original song. But that didn’t stop Idina Menzel and nine other Elsa voice actresses from around the world from putting on one killer performance.

    Joined by Norwegian singer-songwriter AURORA (the voice that goes “WoooO-oOOooh-oOOh-OOOoooH” in the background of the song), Menzel took the stage to start off the song clad in an icy white dress. Pretty soon, she was joined by Elsa voice actresses and singers from nine different countries singing the song in their own native languages, also while wearing white ensembles to channel their inner Elsas.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (14)

    Matt Patches

    Hey, Taika Waititi just won an Oscar

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (15)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (16)

    Photo: Kimberley French/Searchlight

    Films like What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople made him a quirky, indie darling. Writing and directing Thor: Ragnarok catapulted him to geek stardom. Appearing as a robot in The Mandalorian solidified him as a way to brighten up any room. His Twitter is just madness.

    But after the 92nd Academy Awards, he’s been given the stamp of mainstream Hollywood approval. Consider him an Oscar winner.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (17)

    Petrana Radulovic

    The complete list of this year’s Oscar winners

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (18)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (19)

    Universal Pictures

    Ah, the magic of Oscars night!

    All night there was anticipation over Best Picture — will Parasite beat out the favored 1917? Will Joker be a dark horse? Will Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood prove the old theory about the Academy loving movies about movies? — the other 23 categories duked it out for a chance of taking home the Oscar gold. You can never count out the underdogs: the Oscars do, sometimes, surprise us.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (20)

    Karen Han

    The 2020 Oscars kicked off with Janelle Monáe and dancing Jokers

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    Last year, the annual Academy Awards ceremony proceeded without a host for the first time since 1989. The decision, which came just a month prior to the actual ceremony, was a shock, since hosts’ opening speeches and bits throughout the night usually defined coverage of the big night. But after the announcement that comedian Kevin Hart would host, Hart became a subject of controversy when some of his old homophobic jokes resurfaced, and as Hart aggressively responded to the criticism, the position seemed to become toxic. Multiple past hosts came forward to say that hosting the Oscars is a thankless task that opens a performer up to brutal examination and criticism. Hence, no host.

    But last year’s awards ceremony proceeded without much of a hitch, and it seems to have been enough of a success for this year’s Oscars to go on without a host as well.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (21)

    Matt Patches

    Adam Sandler gave the year’s best Oscar speech — just not at the Oscars

    People love Adam Sandler. Netflix users alone have supposedly watched 2 billion hours worth of Sandler Content since he struck up a deal with the streaming platform. He carried his latest film, the relentless, comedic thriller Uncut Gems, to record heights; it’s now A24’s biggest release to date. The man is a genuine movie star.

    And as a genuine movie star, he’s quite good at giving genuine movie star speeches.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (22)

    Emily Heller

    Answering your Oscar questions before the big night (which, FYI, is tonight)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (23)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (24)

    Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

    The 92nd Academy Awards are fast approaching. The annual celebration of the best movies of the year (or at least the movies whose producers spent the most money on Oscars campaigning) will soon award its prestigious prizes.

    As in most years, the 2020 nominees include some of the most respected filmmakers in Hollywood, as well as younger breakout stars like Little Women’s Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh. Also like in previous years, the nominations still skew very white and male, despite the Academy taking steps to broaden the voter base after the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite movement.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (25)

    Petrana Radulovic

    Parasite and Little Women actually have the same ending

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (26)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (27)

    Image: Neon/CJ Entertainment

    Parasite and Little Women, both nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, take place in different time periods, in different countries, and have different tones. One follows a poor family in South Korea infiltrating a rich family, while the other is a story about four sisters growing up in the late 1800s. And yet they still share something very specific. Besides the fact that both movies were snubbed in Oscar categories they should’ve snagged (none of Parasite’s actors were nominated in the performance categories, while Greta Gerwig wasn’t given a directing nod for Little Women), these movies also share the same ending.

    Yes, the black-comedy thriller set in modern-day South Korea and the adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century coming-of-age novel have the same ending. Not just thematically, though they both explore economic politics and access to wealth, but in a literal sense. Both movies have ambiguous, nested-puzzle box endings, but the final shot of each movie solidifies any lingering doubts over what plays out on screen and what fits thematically within the movie.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (28)

    Karen Han

    I still love watching the Oscars

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (29)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (30)

    Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

    I still love watching the Oscars. That may seem like an innocuous opinion, but in a world where Green Book won Best Picture, some Oscar-haters seem to take it as outright heresy. I didn’t think Green Book was a good or prudent movie, and I was frustrated when it won. And like so many Oscar viewers, I’ve become intimately acquainted with this feeling of disappointment in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ judgment, over years and across many awards categories. I’m prepping for a similar situation during the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, though I won’t say what movie I’m actually rooting for in the Best Picture slot, in case I end up jinxing things. But the question remains: Why would I love watching a ceremony that, for the most part, gives me so much grief?

    Every year, in the months leading up to February, everyone who cares about movies works themselves into a tizzy over who will or won’t win at the Oscars. As a child, my impression of the Oscars was simply that it was a few hours of watching glamorous famous people cavort with each other. As I’ve gotten older, and more opinionated about what is and isn’t nominated, the awards have become a flashpoint of frustration.

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  • Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (31)

    Emily Heller

    How to watch all 9 of this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (32)

    Oscars 2020: the biggest awards, speeches, and moments (33)

    Graphic: James Bareham/Polygon | Source images: Various

    The 92nd Academy Awards took place on Sunday, Feb. 9, with a hostless, three-and-a-half-hour ceremony that ended with the prestigious Best Picture Oscar going to Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean class satire Parasite. The other eight films nominated for Best Picture this year run the gamut from historical dramas (1917, The Irishman, Ford v. Ferrari) and darkly comedic alternate histories (Jojo Rabbit, Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood) to a portrait of a messy divorce (Marriage Story) and a fresh interpretation of classic literature (Little Women). And then there’s Joker.

    While streaming services have made it easier to watch Oscar movies (two of the nominees are Netflix Originals), catching up is still a daunting task. We’ve done the math — these films add up to nearly 21 and a half hours in total run time.

    Read Article >

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