CONTEST: Belmont's Connection To Oscar

While films with Boston-area connections – Charlestown and Boston ("The Town"), Lowell ("The Fighter") and Cambridge ("The Social Network") – are up for the running for some of the major award categories at tonight's 83rd annual Academy Awards, a documentary with a Belmont connection will be up in the running for the coveted Oscar.

Sebastian Junger, born and raised in Belmont, has been nominated in the feature documentary category for Restrepo, in which he and photographer Tim Hetherington documented for a year the army platoon that defended two combat encampments in the heart of an insurgent-held valley in Afghanistan. 

Junger – the author of "The Perfect Storm" who now lives in New York City – and Hetherington's documentary, produced by National Geographic Entertainment, has won the Sundance Film Festival's domestic documentary award last year. 

Other Belmont residents have been nominated and won the Academy Award. Author Tom Perrotta has been nominated for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) with Todd Field in 2006 for "Little Children", losing to "The Departed" while the adaptation his book "Election" was nominated in 1999 - the screenwriters were Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor - which was beaten out by "The Cider House Rules."

If Junger and Hetherington win tonight, it will NOT be the first time a film with a Belmont connection will have won the Academy Award. Oscar has come to Belmont at least once since 1980. Do you know the resident (or residents) who took home the Academy Award back to the 02478 zip code?

Be the first Belmont resident to answer this Oscar puzzler in the comment box below and I will pick up the tab for lunch for two at Stone Hearth Pizza in Belmont Center.

You can also follow the Oscars with your own ballot by visiting our Hollywood Patch.

Good luck and good watching tonight.