Which mostly silent black-and-white French film won Best Picture for 2011? The Artist won the award at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.
The Artist is a 2011 French-Belgian production written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. It is mostly silent, uses black-and-white photography, and is set in Hollywood between 1927 and 1932, when silent cinema was giving way to talking pictures. The story follows silent-film star George Valentin and rising actress Peppy Miller, played by Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.
The film received 10 Oscar nominations and won five: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Score, and Best Costume Design. Dujardin became the first French actor to win Best Actor. The wording “for 2011” refers to the film’s release year; the ceremony itself took place on February 26, 2012. The Artist is often confused with Parasite in “first foreign film” trivia, but Parasite was the first primarily non-English-language film to win; The Artist was largely silent and made outside the United States and United Kingdom.