by Nathaniel R
from left to right: del Toro, Guadagnino, Wright, Peele, Jenkins, Rees, Nolan, McDonagh, Aronofsky, Baker, Spielberg, Gerwig, Scott, Bigelow, Coppola, Villeneuve
While I was updating the Oscar charts for Picture and Director it occurred to me that the Academy's directing branch could well come up with their most diverse shortlist ever. Generally speaking when the Best Director lineup has had some variations from its usual five middle aged white American directors it's been with older white European auteurs. But in the past twelve years things have been shifting for that category quite a lot despite frequent complaints that they aren't changing at all. Or at least that they're not changing fast enough.
Consider that the following things have all happened in the past twelve Oscar races:
- Ang Lee became the first Asian to win Best Director (2005)
- Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director (2009)
- Ang Lee became the first Asian to win Best Director twice (2012)
- Alfonso Cuarón became the first Latin American to win Best Director (2013)
- Alejandro G Iñárritu became the first Latin American to win Best Director twice (2014/2015)
- Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, and Barry Jenkins were all nominated (2009-2016) quadrupling the number of black men nominated in that category's history! (Before them there had only been John Singleton for Boyz n the Hood)
In fact only three American-born men have won this category in the past 12 years (the Coens, Scorsese and Damien Chazelle) so things are changing... or at least globalizing.
Kathryn Bigelow (Detroit) is the only female winner of the Best Director Oscar. No female director has been nominated more than once for the prize. She was famously expected to be nominated a second time (but wasn't) for Zero Dark Thirty.
While it's too early really to know who will be nominated for Best Director this year, let alone win, it's worth celebrating that it's been such a great year for female directors and directors of color, both in Oscar's purview and well beyond it. As such if you look at the people still standing as hopefuls in that category -- it's generous to list 16 people in the grid above, I know but all of them have either already won awards, are still being discussed, or are still campaigning -- it's remarkably diverse. Two black directors, one Mexican director, and 5 of the 16 are women! The latter is particularly remarkable if you compare it to past years or even to current statistics about how few female directors get hired for motion picture directing in Hollywood.
Sadly, all five women might be at significant disadvantage: Patty Jenkins directed a superhero movie, Sofia Coppola's movie wasn't as well regarded in release as it was at Cannes, Dee Rees's epic has the Netflix problem of feeling like a TV movie to the industry because of the company's anti-theatrical stance, and Kathryn Bigelow's movie flopped in release and is divisive on top of that. Finally Greta Gerwig is working in a subgenre Oscar rarely respects (high school coming of age) and the Spirits ignored her in directing which might be a bad sign since they loved the picture. But, that said, this is progress that so many women are in the mix. I think it's the most we've ever seen this late in the game and we'll take that as a wonderful sign for the future!
Jordan Peele directing Betty Gabriel in Get Out
Even if the directing branch chooses an all male list again it's likely to be more diverse than usual (hi Del Toro and Peele!) and could accidentally end up looking like the foreign film category with multiple countries representing (US, UK, Mexico, and Italy all looking formidable at the moment).