The English Patient is a 1996 epic romantic war drama film directed by Anthony Minghella from his own script based on the 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje, and produced by Saul Zaentz.

The film stars Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas alongside Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Colin Firth in supporting roles.

The eponymous protagonist, a man burned beyond recognition who speaks with an English accent, recalls his history in a series of flashbacks, revealing to the audience his true identity and the love affair in which he was involved before the war.

The film ends with a definitive onscreen statement that it is a highly fictionalized account of László Almásy (died 1951) and other historical figures and events.

The film received twelve nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Director for Minghella, and Best Supporting Actress for Binoche.

Hana, a French-Canadian WWII Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps combat nurse, discovers from a wounded soldier that her boyfriend has been killed.

Lieutenant Kip, a Sikh sapper in the British Indian Army posted with Sergeant Hardy to clear German mines and booby traps, soon joins them.

In the late 1930s, Hungarian cartographer László Almásy is exploring a region of the Sahara as part of a Royal Geographical Society archeological and surveying expedition group, which includes his good friend Englishman Peter Madox, and British couple Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton, who provide aerial surveys using their plane.

Upon returning to Cairo, they begin an affair, while the group arranges for more detailed archaeological surveys of the cave and the surrounding area.

Almásy tells Caravaggio, with Hana listening nearby, about packing camp in 1941 when Geoffrey arrives in the biplane.

Arriving at British-held El Tag, he explains her desperate situation and asks for help, but a young officer detains him on suspicion of being a spy.

[13] According to Minghella, during the development of the project with 20th Century Fox, the "studio wanted the insurance policy of so-called bigger" actors.

"[15] After months of disputes with Fox, the studio pulled out just three weeks before production was to begin and Harvey Weinstein came in and acquired worldwide rights for Miramax Films for $27.5 million.

[14] To help the film get made, cast and crew agreed to salary deferrals totalling $10 million and Zaentz met the remainder of the production costs.

Murch, with a career that already included such complex works as the Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, dreaded the task of editing the film with multiple flashbacks and time frames.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the movie "a stunning feat of literary adaptation as well as a purely cinematic triumph".

[25] In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane argues that "the triumph of the film lies not just in the force and the range of the performances—the crisp sweetness of Scott Thomas, say, versus the raw volatility of Binoche—but in Minghella's creation of an intimate epic: vast landscapes mingle with the minute details of desire, and the combination is transfixing".

The website's critical consensus states, "Though it suffers from excessive length and ambition, director Minghella's adaptation of the Michael Ondaatje novel is complex, powerful, and moving.