The English Patient

Anthony Minghella's The English Patient won nine Academy Awards at the 69th Academy Awards in March 1997, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Binoche), Best Cinematography (John Seale), Best Film Editing (Walter Murch), Best Original Score (Gabriel Yared) and Best Art Direction. It also won the BAFTA for Best Film and a further five BAFTAs at the same ceremony. It is one of the most decorated English-language productions of the 1990s.

The film is adapted from Michael Ondaatje's 1992 Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name. Producer Saul Zaentz spent over four years developing the project; 20th Century Fox dropped the production midway through pre-production over casting decisions, and Miramax stepped in to complete the financing. The cast (Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Kevin Whately) was assembled across British, French, American and Indian-origin performers in a structurally multinational ensemble.

The desert sequences were shot in Tunisia in the dunes east of Tozeur, with the Italian sequences shot at the real Monastero di Sant'Anna in Pienza in southern Tuscany. Walter Murch's editing of the parallel-timeline structure (present-day Italy intercut with pre-war North Africa) is one of the most-discussed editing accomplishments of the decade and is taught extensively in film-school postproduction courses. Minghella died unexpectedly in 2008 at fifty-four, having directed only six features; The English Patient remains the centre of his work.