Women Directors Set Oscar Record, But Only One Woman Nominated For Best Director
For the first time in the 96 years of the Academy Awards, three of the 10 films that received Best Picture nominations were directed by women. Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" (the blockbuster sensation of 2023), Celine Song's "Past Lives" (my personal choice for the best film of the entire year), and Justine Triet's "Anatomy of a Fall" (the most complex movie of the year) all received Best Picture nominations, and all three are incredibly well-deserved.
As Variety points out, 591 movies had been nominated for Oscars before this year's nominees were announced. In that 95-year span, it's been exceptionally rare for women to have directed two movies nominated for Best Picture:
Only four years have included two films directed by women among the best picture nominees: Lone Scherfig's ["An Education"] and Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" (2009), Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids Are All Right" and Debra Granik's "Winter's Bone" (2010), Chloé Zhao's "Nomadland" and Emerald Fennell's "Promising Young Woman" (2020), and Siân Heder's "CODA" and Jane Campion's "The Power of the Dog" (2021).
Unfortunately, the voting body only bestowed a Best Director nomination to one of the three women: Justine Triet.
They almost had it...
Part of the reason for the disparity comes down to how the Oscar nominations are compiled. Each individual branch of the Academy — directors, editors, costume designers, etc. — votes for the nominees in their specific categories, while the Best Picture nominees are voted on by every branch of the organization. Looking at these nominations (or lack thereof) through that lens, it means that the nearly 11,000 members of the Academy collectively respect and appreciate the end result of Gerwig and Song's films, but the directing branch — which, we should note, is still primarily dominated by men — did not collectively think the work that achieved that end result was worthy of recognition (or as worthy as other films, anyway).
People have been saying for years that the director of every Best Picture nominee deserves recognition (you've probably seen statements like, "Oh, I guess [X movie] must have directed itself!?"), but the fact that there are only five Best Director slots and ten Best Picture nominations makes this category tougher to crack. I'm thrilled to see Triet recognized for her work directing "Anatomy of a Fall." I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's work on "Oppenheimer," Martin Scorsese's work on "Killers of the Flower Moon," Yorgos Lanthimos' work on "Poor Things," and Jonathan Glazer's work on "The Zone of Interest," as well. I'm also a fan of Greta Gerwig's work on "Barbie" and Celine Song's work on "Past Lives."
I don't have a solution here. Nobody does. That's why it's fun (?) to talk and think about this stuff every year. There's still plenty of work to do in terms of representation at the Academy Awards, and while I wish two of my favorite directors of the year could have received nominations, I'll take solace in Triet's nomination and knowing that a Best Picture nomination for "Barbie" and "Past Lives" is a pretty good consolation prize, all things considered.