It’s easy to get caught up in awards season excitement as the Oscars approach – the glitz and glamour of the red carpet generating global talking points, memes and pub chatter for weeks on end.
But when it’s really broken down, the Oscars are essentially just a microcosm of Hollywood. It’s a depressing fact that films directed by previous winners have more chance of being nominated than those directed by newcomers.
Because of this, the best film in any given year almost never wins the evening’s most coveted prize – in fact, it’s sometimes not even nominated in the first place.
Over the decades, there have been countless glaring omissions – films that were nominated but were beaten by far inferior films and classic films that failed to secure a single nomination.
As the 2020 Oscars approach – a ceremony that’s fast becoming a two-horse race between a film that actually deserves the top prize (Parasite) and a film that does not (1917) – we’ve run through 20 brilliant films that you would have expected to be a Best Picture winner, but weren’t.
Click through the bellow gallery to see what films made the list
The Oscars take place on 9 February. Find a gallery compiling the films that should never have won an Oscar here.
