Greta Gerwig
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Barbie director Greta Gerwig was resoundingly defeated in the Best Director category at the Oscar nominations on Tuesday. But after no female filmmakers were represented in the category last year, Anatomy of a Fall's Justine Triet received a nomination.
Triet, Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) and Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) were nominated in the coveted category on Tuesday morning.
Gerwig is a notable critic, as the Barbie director received multiple Best Director nominations (Directors Guild of America, Golden Globes, Critics Choice) and won (Palm Springs International Film Fest) throughout awards season. She was also on various experts' best director prediction lists, including . Frontrunner Alexander Payne (The Holdovers) was also left out.
Last year, no woman was nominated for best director. The nominees were Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin), Todd Field (Tar), Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans). This was also in a year in which many Oscar contenders were led by women: Sarah Polley for “Women Talking,” Gina Prince-Bythewood for “The Woman King,” Maria Schrader for “She Said” and Charlotte Wells for “Aftersun.” “, all of which have been omitted.
The Academy only nominated seven women in the Best Director category (eight in this year's nominations), and only three won. Gerwig (for Lady Bird) joins Lina Wertmüller, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Emerald Fennell, Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion as the only women nominated in the Academy Awards' century-long history.
Bigelow won in 2009 for “The Hurt Locker,” Zhao won for “Nomadland” in 2020 and Campion for “The Power of the Dog” in 2021. Zhao was nominated in the category alongside Fennell for “Promising Young Woman,” which was the first There was a time when more than one woman was nominated in the category.
The Best Director category is voted on by nearly 600 members of the Directors Branch. Women rarely win awards in the directing category, but that doesn't stop their films from being nominated for best picture. Last year, for example, “Women Talking” (by Polley) received a Best Picture nomination. In history, Randa Haines' Children of a Lesser God was nominated for five awards in 1987, including best picture, but not best director. Likewise, Barbra Streisand was rejected for a directing nomination for The Prince of Tides in 1992, despite earning seven other nominations, including Best Picture. Ava DuVernay was recently rejected while her 2014 film Selma was nominated for Best Picture. And this year, Gerwig's Barbie was also nominated for Best Picture.
By comparison, the Directors Guild of America, which announced its nominations two weeks ago, nominated Gerwig, Lanthimos, Nolan, Payne and Scorsese. But it was the first-time director category that featured a more diverse cast, as has been the case in the category in previous years. This year's roster featured all people of color and four women: Cord Jefferson of American Fiction, Manuela Martelli of Chile '76, Noora Niasari of Shayda, AV Rockwell of A Thousand and One and Celine Song of Past Lives. In the 76-year history of the DGA Awards, only 12 women have been nominated in the feature film category.
Two things to note: For the first time in Academy history, three of the 10 Best Picture nominees (“Anatomy of a Fall,” “Past Lives” and “Barbie”) were directed by a woman. Gerwig is now the first director ever to have his first three (solo) Directed films are nominated for best picture: Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie.