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, all of which have proven competitive across numerous categories. “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” have dominated the critics groups in terms of wins, with both Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler looking for their first ever Oscar wins at the upcoming Academy Awards. “Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie meanwhile is looking to secure his first ever nomination, whilst previous winners Chloe Zhao and Guillermo Del Toro round out the five nominees.
It was a poor nomination morning for the International contingent, with Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-wook and Joachim Trier all missing out, but the DGA has a tendency to overlook foreign language movies. This line-up could easily change come Oscar nomination morning on the 22nd January, and I predict either Safdie, Del Toro, or potentially both, will miss out to accommodate one of the International filmmakers.
DGA Nominations:
Directorial Achievement in Feature Film
- Paul Thomas Anderson “One Battle After Another”
- Ryan Coogler “Sinners”
- Guillermo Del Toro “Frankenstein”
- Josh Safdie “Marty Supreme”
- Chloe Zhao “Hamnet”
Directorial Achievement First-Time Feature Film
- Hasan Hadi “The President’s Cake”
- Harry Lighton “Pillion”
- Alex Russell “Lurker”
- Charlie Polinger “The Plague”
- Eva Victor “Sorry, Baby”
The winners will be announced Saturday 7th February
Check out other award season winners, nominations and news below:
Dan Loves Film 
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