For the first time in 28 years, the Best Director Oscar category is made up of all first-time nominees.
This year, Anora’s Sean Baker, The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet, The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat, A Complete Unknown’s James Mangold, and Emilia Pérez’s Jacques Audiard make up the five nominees vying for the golden statuette. All of these movies and filmmakers have been doing very well on the awards circuit this year, so none of these nominations are entirely surprising, but the fact that there are no repeats adds an extra layer of excitement.
Oscar 1998: Best Director
Both have a sweeping historical epic (Titanic and The Brutalist), a slice-of-life indie comedy (The Full Monty and Anora), a mid-20th Century period piece (L.A. Confidential and A Complete Unknown), and a foreign-born filmmaker making a splash stateside (The Sweet Hereafter and Emilia Pérez/The Substance).
The only one that doesn’t correlate is Good Will Hunting, though it could be argued that both it and The Substance represent offbeat voice getting a chance at the mainstream.
It would be exciting for such an uncompromising filmmaker as Fargeat to take home a win, but victory for The Substance seems unlikely outside of win for Demi Moore, and even that would be more for the story behind it than for the performance itself.
Anora is the most cinephile-beloved film, earning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Fest as well as other major critics awards, though the Academy doesn’t have great track record of awarding arthouse films–Moonlight was the exception.
Hollywood is in major transition right now, with the effects of the pandemic and the 2023 strikes still being felt, and streamers continuing to upend traditional business models.
With the lack of clear awards juggernaut like Oppenheimer, the nominees reflect this upheaval.
Half of the nominated directors took real risks with their works, whether in the form of crime musical in Sanish about a transgender cartel boss, a movie so long it needed an intermission, a squirm-inducing body horror movie with a feminist bent, or a grounded look at the lives of sex workers.
