Which Best Picture winner follows the von Trapp family singers in Austria?

The Best Picture winner that follows the von Trapp family singers in Austria is The Sound of Music.

Released in 1965, Robert Wise’s musical follows Maria, a novice preparing to become a nun who becomes governess to the seven children of widowed naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp. Set largely in Salzburg, the film combines family songs and romance with the growing threat of Nazi Germany.

The movie was adapted from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, which drew on Maria von Trapp’s 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. The film takes substantial creative liberties: the real family’s history, ages, timeline, and musical career differed from the polished screen version. Its escape from Austria is dramatized, though the Anschluss of 1938 is historical.

The Sound of Music won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It is often confused with West Side Story because both are major 1960s musicals, but West Side Story did not win Best Picture until its 1961 film release, four years earlier.