Only five women have ever been nominated for the Academy Awards' director honor throughout the award's history: Lina Wertmüller (1976’s Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (1993’s The Piano), Sofia Coppola (2003’s Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (2009’s The Hurt Locker) and Greta Gerwig (2017’s Lady Bird). Only Bigelow got a win in this field, holding the record of the first and only female Best Director winner.
Last year, there were some projects under Oscar buzz during the awards season, but no female director got a Best Director nomination at the Oscars - Chloé Zhao (The Rider), Debra Granik (Leave No Trace), Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) or even Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) present critically acclaimed projects that earned them a big couple of prestigious honors, but none of them was able to make the Best Director's nominees shortlist. Will 2019 be any different?
Well, 2019 seems to be another female directors' rich year. I mean, not only female directors, but also non-white female directors!
For example, Lulu Wang, the Chinese-American writer/director of the sleeper A24 hit The Farewell, seems to be under heavy Oscar buzz for Best Original Screenplay, but also for her sensitive and heartfelt directing work in The Farewell. The movie was a huge sensation in this year's edition of Sundance Film Festival and it has already grossed $18M at the box-office (from a $3M budget). Not only her work is award-worthy, but it seems she's in a relationship with Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins (Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk), which means some circles might campaign for her! Can she be the first Asian-American female director to be nominated? No matter what, Wang has emerged this year as a director to watch!
Greta Gerwig is back to Oscar race again (and, once again, not as an actress, but as a writer/director) - she will bring us another adaptation of the classic Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. It might be just one more adaptation of this classic (which has already been adapted multiple times for movies or TV), but having the same fresh vision of Gerwig directing a period piece sounds exciting no matter what. If she manages to get a Best Director nomination, Gerwig would become the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice (remember she was nominated for 2017's Lady Bird)! Fun fact: she'll be competing against her partner, Noah Baumbach, who'll be in the run for a Best Director nom for his work in Marriage Story.
Another Oscar hopeful for a Best Director nomination this year is Marielle Heller - the director of 2015's The Diary of a Teenage Girl and 2018's Can You Ever Forgive Me?. She's fresh from the Oscar recognition her last movie received from the AMPAS (Can You Forgive Me? managed to get nominations for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay) and her latest project - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - met enthusiastic rave reviews at this year's edition of Toronto International Film Festival (and it was said to be a real crowd-pleaser too). She's already under the AMPAS radar for sure and with her 2nd success in a row, I believe she has nice changes in becoming the 6th female nominated for Best Director.
Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic, Chinonye Chukwu must also be under consideration for Clemency. The movie was acquired by NEON which set a late year release date for this small indie and while most efforts seem focused in Alfre Woodard's Best Actress campaign, I believe Chukwu might also get some recognition, despite not being "hot enough" for Best Director glory. According to some trivia, she was the first black female director to ever win Sundance Film Festival top prize, so there's some narrative for her already. let's wait and see!
Another names that could pop-up during this awards season would be: black female director Kasi Lemmons, who directs Harriet, but the movie got mixed and some cold reviews from Toronto International Film Festival, "killing" its initial strong Oscar buzz; and Lorene Scafaria, who directs Hustlers, a movie that seems destined to be a huge box-office (and cultural) hit, but most reviews seem to single-out Jennifer Lopez's performance not her directing approach - it's more of an ensemble cast movie than a director's one.
It's too early to say if organizations will embrace female directors, specially if Oscar voters will be into female directors after ignoring all of them last year in spite of beautiful works from them, but this year's projects from female directors look more Oscar baity (more conventional) and they are far more Oscar buzzy at this early point of the race than last year's.
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