‘Anora’ director Sean Baker wins top prize at the DGA Awards, shaking up Oscar race
In a surprising win that resets the Oscar race, Anora director Sean Baker took home the Feature Film Director prize at Directors Guild of America Awards Saturday, instantly becoming the frontrunner for the Best Director trophy at the Academy Awards.
Baker, a first-time DGA nominee, toppled a strong field that included fellow Oscar nominees Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), and James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), along with Conclave director Edward Berger, who failed to land an Oscar bid. The DGA victory came on the same night Baker’s film — which personally earned him four Academy Award bids (in addition to Best Director, he’s up for Best Picture, original screenplay, and editing) — unexpectedly won the top prize at another major precursor, the Producers Guild of America Awards, and one night after the film scored at the Critics Choice Awards.
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Corbet had still been considered the prohibitive favorite for both the DGA honor and directing Oscar going into Saturday.
Anora stars Mikey Madison (nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars) as a young sex worker from Brooklyn who meets and impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, as bedlam ensues. It’s a crowd pleaser that is now clearly a DGA pleaser as well.
The DGA Feature Film category is a consistently reliable bellwether for the Best Director Oscar. Nineteen of the last 22 DGA champs have gone on to win the Academy Award for directing. Over the past 76 years, the DGA and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have only disagreed on the year’s top feature director eight times total. with the last four years lining up perfectly for Chloé Zhao (Nomadland in 2021), Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog in 2022), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023), and Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer last year). The last time a DGA winner failed to go on to cop the Oscar was 2020, when Sam Mendes won at DGA for 1917 but lost at the Academy Awards to Bong Joon-ho for Parasite.
It was far less shocking that RaMell Ross earned the First-Time Director honor for Nickel Boys, considering his film is nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. He beat out fellow nominees Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light), Megan Park (My Old Ass, which on Friday won a Critics Choice Award for Best Comedy Movie), Halfdan Ullmann T?ndel (Armand), and Sean Wang (Didi). The category was won last year by Celine Song for Past Lives.
On the TV side, Frederick E.O. Toye won for dramatic series directing for the Shōgun episode “Crimson Sky” and Steven Zaillian earned the limited-series prize for directing for Ripley (Netflix) — upending three episodes of The Penguin in something of a surprise. It was Zaillian’s second DGA win, his first coming in 2017 for an episode of the limited series The Night Of.
Lucia Aniello won comedy series directing for the “Bulletproof” Season 3 finale of Hacks, beating a trio of episodes of The Bear in the process. It was Aniello’s second DGA triumph, the first coming in 2021 for a Season 1 episode of the series. Liz Patrick won the variety/talk/news series award for the episode of Saturday Night Live featuring host John Mulaney and musical guest Chappell Roan. Neil DeGroot won reality directing for Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted.
Earning special honors at this DGA’s were Ang Lee (DGA Lifetime Achievement Award), Mary Rae Thewlis (Robert B. Aldrich Service Award), and Thomas J. Whelan (Frank Capra Achievement Award).
Here is the complete list of winners at the 77th annual DGA Awards:
Feature Film Director: Sean Baker, Anora
Michael Apted First-Time Feature Film Director: RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys
Documentary Director: Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, Porcelain War
Dramatic Series: Frederick E.O. Toye, Shōgun, “Crimson Sky”
Comedy Series Director: Lucia Aniello, Hacks, “Bulletproof”
Limited Series/TV-Movie Director: Steven Zaillian, Ripley
Best Variety/Talk/News/Sports Series Director: Liz Patrick, Saturday Night Live, “John Mulaney/Chappell Roan”
Variety/Talk/News/Sports Special Director: Beth McCarthy Miller, The Roast of Tom Brady
Reality Program Director: Neil DeGroot, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, “The Cliffs of Ireland”
Children’s Program Director: Amber Sealey, Out of My Mind
Commercials Director: Andreas Nilsson (Biscuit Filmworks)
“Board Game,” Hennessy Wieden+Kennedy London
“First Office Poo,” Andrex FCB London
“One More,” Apple Client Direct
“Whizzer,” Virgin Media VCCP London
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