The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is the latest of the guilds to announce their nominations for the ongoing award season. While many tend to look at the PGA and SAG for indicators for the upcoming Academy Awards in terms of potential nominations and winners, the DGA has a well proven track record when it comes to films that take home the Best Picture Oscar. In fact, in its 76 year history, only three films have gone onto win the Academy Award for Best Picture without a DGA nomination, “Hamlet” (1949), “Driving Miss Daisy” (1990) and most recently “CODA” in 2022.
You could argue that this reduces the Oscar race to the five films nominated below, all of which have had strong awards campaigns so far. The line-up is made up of five, first-time nominees this year, with Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez) and Edward Berger (Conclave) continuing their respectable campaigns having not missed any major precursor so far, all but assuring them a spot amongst the Oscar director nominees. The all important fifth slot rather surprisingly went to James Mangold for Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”, which has proven popular with the guilds in recent days having racked up an impressive four SAG nominations. The film’s inclusion here means heavyweight blockbusters “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked” see their respective directors miss out. Other exclusions include Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) and Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light), although the latter made the first-time director category.
DGA Nominations:
Directorial Achievement in Feature Film
- Jacques Audiard “Emilia Perez”
- Sean Baker “Anora”
- Edward Berger “Conclave”
- Brady Corbet “The Brutalist”
- James Mangold “A Complete Unknown”
Directorial Achievement First-Time Feature Film
- Payal Kapadia “All We Imagine as Light”
- Megan Park “My Old Ass”
- RaMell Ross “Nickel Boys”
- Halfdan Ullman Tondel “Armand”
- Sean Wang “Didi”
The winners will be announced Saturday 8th February
Check out other award season winners, nominations and news below:
Dan Loves Film 
Nice post 🌅🌅
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