The awards season norm has seen the nearly annual occurrence of at least one difference between the lineups of Best Director Oscar and the DGA Award nominees. In only five of the 76 years of the DGA Awards have the Guild nominations exactly mirrored their Academy Award counterparts.
This time around Greta Gerwig, Jonathan Glazer, Alexander Payne and Justine Triet are in line with that predominant history. Glazer and Triet earned Best Director Oscar nominations this week for The Zone of Interest (A24) and Anatomy of a Fall (Neon), respectively. Gerwig and Payne, who didn’t make the directorial Oscar cut, earned DGA Award nominations for Barbie (Warner Bros. Pictures) and The Holdovers (Focus Features), respectively.
Three of the five directors vying for the DGA Award and the Outstanding Achievement in Directing Oscar are in sync this year: Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things (Searchlight); Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures); and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films).
On the flip side of tradition, if Glazer or Triet were to win the directing Oscar, that development wouldn’t be aligned with but rather bucking history. Only eight times has the DGA Award winner not gone on to win the Oscar. That happened most recently in 2020 when Sam Mendes won the DGA Award for 1917 while Bong Joon-ho scored the Oscar for Parasite.
Even without a Best Director nomination, Barbie tallied eight Oscar nods--for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay (Gerwig and Noah Baumbach), Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling) and Actress (America Ferrera), Production Design (production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer), Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran), and two for Original Song (“I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?”).
The Holdovers garnered five nods--for Best Picture, Leading Actor (Paul Giamatti), Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Original Screenplay (David Hemingson) and Editing (Kevin Tent, ACE).
Meanwhile Anatomy of a Fall scored five noms--Best Picture, Director, Leading Actress (Sandra Hüller), Editing (Laurent Sénéchal), and Original Screenplay (Triet and Arthur Harari)
And The Zone of Interest also tallied five nominations--Best Picture, Best International Feature, Director, Sound (Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn), and Adapted Screenplay (Glazer).
The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall are the first two films primarily in non-English languages to be nominated for Best Picture in the same year.
Furthermore, The Zone of Interest is the ninth non-English language film to be nominated for both International Feature Film and Best Picture in the same year. Each of the previous films (Z, 1969; Life Is Beautiful, 1998; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000;
Amour, 2012; Roma, 2018; Parasite, 2019; Drive My Car, 2021; All Quiet on the Western Front, 2022) won for International Feature Film. To date, Parasite is the only film to also win Best Picture.
Topping this year’s overall Oscar nominations derby was Oppenheimer with 13, followed by Poor Things with 11, and Killers of the Flower Moon with 10. All three films scored nods for Best Picture and Director.
Career marks
Glazer and Triet each picked up their first two career Oscar nominations this year. Glazer for Directing and Adapted Screenplay; Triet for Director and Original Screenplay. (Director Glazer is a mainstay at London-based commercial production house Academy Films, which recently opened an office in the U.S.)
Scorsese garnered his 10th Best Director Oscar nod. He has an overall total of 16 career Academy Award nominations including one for Best Picture this year. He won for Directing for The Departed (2006) and was nominated in the category for Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Good Fellas (1990), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), Hugo (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and The Irishman (2019). He has nominations for the adapted screenplays for Good Fellas and The Age of Innocence (1993) and Best Picture nominations for Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman.
Nolan scored his second nomination in the directing category and his eighth overall, including his Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay nominations this year. He was nominated for his original screenplay for Memento (2001), Best Picture and Original Screenplay for Inception (2010), and Best Picture and Directing for Dunkirk (2017).
Lanthimos garnered his second Best Director Oscar nomination and fifth overall, including his Best Picture nod this year. He was previously nominated for his original screenplay for The Lobster (2016) and for Directing and Best Picture for The Favourite (2018).
(This is the 12th installment of a 16-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print/PDF issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards gala ceremony. Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced on January 23, 2024, The 96th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 10, 2024.)