10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees You Might Not Have Heard Of

2. Il Postino (The Postman)

Year: 1995 Fellow Nominees: Apollo 13, Babe, Braveheart, Sense and Sensibility One of only eight foreign films to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar as opposed to the Best Film in a Foreign Language Oscar (though some, like Michael Haneke's Amour, have been nominated in both categories), Michael Radford's Il Postino, a peculiar lineup inclusion, was nominated for five Academy Awards back in 1995, with two coming posthumously for star, Massimo Troisi (Lead Actor, co-writer), who died only twelve hours after the main filming had ended (he reportedly postponed surgery in order to complete the film). In what is surely one of the worst ever years for Best Picture candidates (admittedly I haven't seen Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility), Il Postino, a story of a simple man who finds a love of poetry while delivering mail to a renowned Italian poet, probably should've won here, the film charming and tender in its own understated way. Troisi, a poet himself, is quietly good as the eponymous Postman, and his romance with Beatrice (Maria Graza Cucinotta) is actually quite beautiful. Alas, though, Il Postino won only one Oscar, for Luis Bacalov's Original Dramatic Score, and the top prize somehow went to Mel Gibson's Braveheart, which inexplicably won five of the ten awards it was nominated for.