Through Her Lens: 2015 (The 88th Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano. Previous Episodes: 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Introduction / Explanation

The sting of the #OscarsSoWhite movement from the 87th Oscars continued as no people of color were nominated in the acting categories for the second consecutive year. Idris Elba won the SAG for Supporting Actor for Beasts of No Nation, but Netflix was a completely new player at the time and unable to get traction in the Oscar race. Jada Pinkett Smith called for an Oscar boycott after her husband Will Smith missed in Actor, but his film Concussion had disappointed at the box office and received mixed reviews. The tension was high enough that The Hollywood Reporter even felt the need to clarify that “there [were] no minority actresses in genuine contention for an Oscar [that] year”.

The lack of diversity extended to gender in Best Director (the subject of this series) where no female directors were in the conversation with the arguable exception of Angelina Jolie early on before By the Sea began to screen...

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Through Her Lens: 2016 (The 89th Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano. Previous Episodes: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Introduction / Explanation

This year at the Oscars marked a landmark in representation. Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight became the first Best Picture winner to star an all-Black cast and the first that was LGBTQ+-themed. This win was even more remarkable as the film went up against the heavily nominated frontrunner La La Land, a romantic musical. This year also marked an unprecedented amount of racial representation in the acting categories, with seven out of 20 nominees being non-White, two of them winning.

However, this considerable victory in diversity did not extend to gender. In the directing category  all the nominees were male. At the time, not much discourse and coverage was given to gender as the focus on representation was mostly around race, especially after the two-year run of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign...

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Through Her Lens: 2017 (The 90th Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano. Previous Episodes: 2018 | 2019 | 2020-21

The 2017 awards season was marred by the multiple accusations of sexual abuse and harrassment made towards several industry giants, mainly notorious film producer Harvey Weinstein. This catapulted the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement into the international spotlight, addressing women’s issues in a broader context, especially with a misogynistic president sitting at the White House.

At that year’s Oscars, Greta Gerwig became only the fifth woman to be nominated for Best Director in the awards’ ninety years of existence. A moment that must be celebrated, but also an embarrassing reminder of how Hollywood has failed women directors, whether in awards or in actual film production. Out of the 341 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2017 (90th Academy Awards), 60 (17.6%) were directed/co-directed by women...

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Through Her Lens: 2018 (The 91st Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano 
Previously: Episode 1 - 2020-21 / Episode 2 - 2019 

Eyes were on the Best Director category at the 91st Academy Awards after Greta Gerwig became only the fifth woman to be nominated in the said category the previous year. Contemporaneous articles expressed disappointment with this fact, but this Oscar year was also plagued with other issues: no ceremony host, plans to give out awards during commercial break, and divisive films like Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Vice being major factors, too.

In a way, these other controversies clouded what could have been a more extensive discussion regarding representation in the Best Director category. Out of the 347 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2018 (91st Academy Awards), 62 of them (or 17.9%) were directed/co-directed by women.

OSCAR-NOMINATED FEMALE-DIRECTED FILMS (in alphabetical order): Animal Behaviour*, Bao*, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Capernaum, Free Solo, Late Afternoon*, Marguerite*, Mary Queen of Scots,  Period. End of Sentence.*, and RBG. (*not in the eligibility list for Best Picture)

OUR ALTERNATIVE SET OF FIVE...

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Through Her Lens: 2019 (The 92nd Oscars)

A new series by Juan Carlos Ojano moving backwards through time looking at female-helmed films. Here's the full introduction if you missed it.

The biggest story of the 2019 awards season was Parasite breaking the language barrier and becoming the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Another story also gained prominence during that season: despite the considerable number of films directed by women that had awards buzz, none of them were nominated in the Best Director category yet again.

This was disappointing since the eligible films coming from all continents displayed the diversity of the work that women directors produced that year. Out of the 344 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2019 (92nd Academy Awards), 78 of them (or 22.7%) were directed/co-directed by women...

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