77th Annual Directors Guild of America Awards

Update: Yesterday, February 8th, 2025 the guild had their awards ceremony and the winners are below in BLUE.

Top award went to Anora's director and consequently, the director has increased exponentionally his chances to win this Oscar category. Still this year there are still some unpredictable categories and perhaps this one could surprise us on Oscar's night.

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January 9th, 2025
Yesterday, January 8, the Directors Guild of America President Lesli Linka Glatter announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film for 2024 and the day before January 7, the guild announced the nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television, Commercials and Documentary for 2024.

The best news for me is Jaques Audiard nomination for his remarkable Emilia Pérez a film that according to me, is as great as his A Prophet, which by-the-way Audiard didn't got a DGA nomination for; so, this is the first DGA nomination for Audiard, finally!

Most nominees were the ones the industry was expecting, except for James Mangold and most claim that instead of him, Denis Villeneuve or Coralie Fargeat deserved to be there. Whatever the reason to snub them, truth is that there is no female director nominated this year which in the last five year it only happened once in 2020, as in 2021 Chloe Zhao won the award, in 2022 was Jane Campion the winner and in 2023 Greta Gerwing was nominated.

Still those snubbed have good chances to get an Oscar nomination as DGA and Oscars partly but rarely overlap with at least one nominee being different in the past 10 years and last year diverged on two (yes, we recall Greta Gerwing was not nominated!).

Another positive eye-popping news is Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel nomination which only has increased my viewing already up desire to watch film as not only Armand has Renate Reinsve as lead but now his extraordinary film lineage -he is Ingmar Bergman grandson- makes his introduction to cinema stardom by the big door.

On other news, Ang Lee will receive the guild's highest honor, the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award that recognizes extraordinary achievements in the art of cinema and motion picture direction.

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Saturday, February 8, 2025 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The Nominations

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film
James Mangold for A Complete Unknown
Sean Baker for Anora - WINNER
Edward Berger for Conclave
Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez
Brady Corbet for The Brutalist

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film
Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light
Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel for Armand
Sean Wang for Didi
Megan Park for My Old Ass
Ramell Ross for Nickel Boys - WINNER

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary
Natalia Rae and Angela Patton for Daughters
Ibrahim Nash'at for Hollywoodgate
Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev for Porcelain War - WINNER
Julia Brave and Emily Kassie for Sugarcane
Johan Grimonprez for Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

To check nominations for theatrical feature at official site go here and for other categories including documentary go here.  To check winners for all categories go here.