Without the big Oscar win, the movie likely would have wound up a title that people vaguely remembered a few years from now, but the Best Picture win means that it now has its own special place in cinematic history, and that it will continue to find audiences for decades.
That really means everything for such an extraordinary feature made with no budget, a very small-scale story, and no A-list stars.
Anyone who has followed the Academy Awards for any significant amount of time also knows that quality is only part of the story, and for Moonlight the subject of the “Oscar Bump” is key as well.
While it received an overwhelming positive response from critics, it also never found its way into more than 650 theaters at a time during its domestic run, and only managed to make $22 million.