10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees You Might Not Have Heard Of

7. Missing

Year: 1982 Fellow Nominees: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Gandhi, Tootsie, The Verdict In a weak-ish year for Best Picture nominees (E.T. retains it's charm and The Verdict is good rather than great Sidney Lumet, but Tootsie is overstated and Gandhi, the actual winner, is outright bad), Greek filmmaker, Costa-Gravas, saw his Missing nominated, his second film to be in the running for Oscars after Z, which saw Gravas nominated for Best Director in 1970. A dense, multi-faceted affair, Missing is perhaps an unusual nominee (or at least it would be now), more concerned with presenting the murk of foreign affairs and the monotony of international bureaucracy than it is any kind of straightforward or redemptive narrative (the film is part of the Criterion Collection, to give you an idea of what kind of circles the film tends to swim in). Starring an incredible, touching performance from Jack Lemmon as the father of a son who goes missing during the Chilean right-wing military coup of 1973, Missing was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Actor and Actress nods for Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, who plays the missing's wife. It won one, for Gravas himself, who picked up the gong for Adapted Screenplay with co-writer, Donald Stewart.