Academy Award For Best Film Editing — Top 20 Winners Ranked

Starting right off the bat with a war film, a favorite of the Best Film Editing Oscar category. Platoon was directed by Oliver Stone and edited by Claire Simpson. The battle scenes might not be quite as grand in scale as some other war films but there is plenty of subtlety and nuance made in editing decisions in and out of the warfare scenes.

The beloved Forrest Gump required cutting-edge technical proficiency in every area of filming and assembling. released just a single year after the groundbreaking Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump made use of CGI when the technology was still in its infancy, which certainly complicated the editing process for Arthur Schmidt working alongside the VFX team.

Star Wars, aka Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, is a clear case of editing saving the day. The film made use of a trio of talents in the editing room with Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew, and Marcia Lucas, who was married to director George Lucas at the time. Many believed that Star Wars would be a failure upon seeing the footage after filming had wrapped, but this team of editors turned those skeptics around entirely and cut together an all-time classic. One editing technique that Star Wars is known for is the wipe transition. Discover every type of editing transition in our breakdown.

The Departed brought the beloved Thelma Schoonmaker her third Oscar for Best Film Editing. Schoonmaker is best known for her collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, whose films make up the majority of her editing resume. The two have a well-developed, symbiotic relationship that produces marvelous results. Learn more about Schoonmaker's editing style.

Find out where The Departed ranks on our list of the greatest gangster films ever made. and learn about editing techniques like jump cuts and match cuts to maximize your understanding of the craft.

The structure of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is somewhat special in that it prioritizes escalating tension over all else. Geography, time of day, and sequencing are cast aside in favor of cutting straight from the height of tension in one storyline right into the middle of one of the other two plot arcs. Lee Smith handled this tension-filled film brilliantly in the editing room.

The idea of constantly escalating tension is illustrated beautifully through the film’s use of the Shepard Tone. Learn all about the Shepard Tone in our comprehensive breakdown of the audio illusion. 

Steven Spielberg’s devastating holocaust film, Schindler’s List is a masterpiece of the early 1990s. The film was edited by Michael Kahn, who is Steven Spielberg’s go-to editor for each of his projects ever since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. See where Schindler’s List ranks on our list of the best Steven Spielberg films.

With Raiders of the Lost Ark, Michael Kahn makes it onto our list for the second time. Having such a strong working relationship with a filmmaker as impressive and influential as Steven Spielberg is an easy way to ensure you always have excellent material to bring into the editing room.

The Matrix was groundbreaking and game changing in every sense of the words. The bold vision of the Wachowskis was finalized in the editing room by Zach Staenberg. Few films spawn as many copycats and trends as the first Matrix film did.

And Michael Kahn finds himself on our list for the third time with another Steven Spielberg film. Saving Private Ryan is the biggest and flashiest editing project of Michael Kahn’s three Oscar winning films. The intense D-Day landing sequence alone would be enough to make Saving Private Ryan a shoo-in for the Best Film Editing Oscar but that is far from being the film’s only masterfully edited battle sequence.

Find out where Saving Private Ryan ranked on our list of the best World War II movies ever made.

The editing done by Gerald B. Greenberg on The French Connection was an important stepping stone in the development of action filmmaking and in the transition from 60s filmmaking into 70s filmmaking. The shooting and editing of The French Connection feels more gritty and raw than practically any film that came before and helped usher in a new wave of stylistic filmmaking.

See where The French Connection ranked on our list of the best action films ever shot.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of the just-plain BIGGEST films ever made. This grand scale is apparent in every facet of the film, from the story to the cinematography, to the very runtime of the film. With a film as complicated as Lawrence of Arabia the deck was stacked against Anne V. Coates in the editing room, but the work she delivered went above and beyond for this classic epic.