Welcome to the directing race for 2024. With the fall film festival season now in the distance and a few potential contenders still to debut on the horizon, it’s time for our first look at the battle for Best Director.
Are we on the cusp of another year where five male directors take all five spots in the Best Director category? Sadly, yes. As it stands, there’s only one female director with even the slightest chance of a nomination and that’s Coralie Farget for The Substance. And she faces the hugely difficult task of being nominated for a horror movie; something that’s only happened twice in the past 25 years (M. Night Shyamalan for The Sixth Sense in 1999 and Jordan Peele for Get Out in 2017). We have to face it. We’re getting an all-male nominee line-up this year.
Putting that aside, the big mover and shaker out of festival season was undoubtedly Brady Corbet for The Brutalist. With rave reviews and an A24 pick-up, the film has stamped its claim as a big contender across the board. Corbet directs the hell out of this three-and-a-half-hour epic and it’s the kind of immense filmmaking the Academy loves to reward. There was also universal acclaim at the festivals for Sean Baker’s Anora, so these two feel like the most solid locks for nominations at this early stage.
That leaves those remaining three spots open to all sorts of possibilities. While reaction to Emilia Pérez at the festivals was noticeably mixed, the majority of reactions still praised Jacques Audiard’s ambitious direction. It’s the kind of outlandish filmmaking that will either be lapped up by voters or completely shunned. However, we know the Academy now loves to nominate at least one filmmaker responsible for an international film and Audiard could be this year’s chosen one.
I think after the shock of seeing Denis Villenueve missing out on a deserved nomination for Dune in 2021, we’re not going to see the same happen again this year for its sequel. While he’s unlikely to score a win (you get the feeling they might wait until the third chapter à la Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings), a nod seems all but certain. And now that Conclave has opened wide and received stellar reviews, it’s hard to ignore Edward Berger sneaking in to snatch the nomination he should have received for All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022.
BEST DIRECTOR PREDICTIONS:
1. Brady Corbet – The Brutalist (A24)
2. Sean Baker – Anora (Neon)
3. Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
4. Denis Villenueve – Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)
5. Edward Berger – Conclave (Focus Features)
IN CONTENTION
Pedro Almodóvar – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics)
Coralie Fargeat – The Substance (MUBI)
Tim Fehlbaum – September 5 (Paramount Pictures)
Luca Guadagnino – Queer (A24)
Greg Kwedar – Sing Sing (A24)
James Mangold – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
Steve McQueen – Blitz (Apple Original Films)
Mohammad Rasoulof – The Seed of the Sacred Fig (NEON)
RaMell Ross – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM Studios)
Ridley Scott – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
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