Welcome to the directing race for 2025. 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.
For the second year in a row, we could be looking at all five directors in the Best Director line-up having also written or co-written their respective films. It’s not an unusual anomaly, but it is one that can only help the campaigns of each filmmaker.
Even at this early stage in the game, Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Chloé Zhao (Hamnet), and Ryan Coogler (Sinners) feel like absolute locks for the first three spots. That being said, shocking snubs are always threatening to rear their ugly head, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
We’re yet to see Marty Supreme, but if it debuts strongly, expect to see Josh Safdie land his first nomination. While his brother, Benny, scored an unexpected Silver Lion win at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Smashing Machine, the wheels have fallen off the film somewhat since then. It received a fairly muted response at TIFF and has flopped at the U.S. box office, so you get the feeling its best chances now really only lie with a Best Actor nod for Dwayne Johnson.
That leaves that final spot up in the air. For now, I’m sticking with Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value), but I can’t shake the feeling he could be this year’s equivalent of Edward Berger, aka his film racks in a big tally of nods, but its director is absent. We know the Academy has recently kept one spot for a filmmaker of a non-English language film, so Trier would fit that bill. But Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice), Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), and Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) would all make for stellar alternatives.
BEST DIRECTOR PREDICTIONS:
1. Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.)
2. Chloé Zhao – Hamnet (Focus Features)
3. Ryan Coogler – Sinners (Warner Bros.)
4. Josh Safdie – Marty Supreme (A24)
5. Joachim Trier – Sentimental Value (NEON)
IN CONTENTION
Noah Baumbach – Jay Kelly (Netflix)
Clint Bentley – Train Dreams (Netflix)
Kathryn Bigelow – A House of Dynamite (Netflix)
James Cameron – Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century Studios)
Jon M. Chu – Wicked: For Good (Universal Pictures)
Bradley Cooper – Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures)
Scott Cooper – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century Pictures)
Guillermo del Toro – Frankenstein (Netflix)
Mona Fastvold – The Testament of Ann Lee (Searchlight Pictures)
Jorgos Lanthimos – Bugonia (Focus Features)
Kleber Mendonça Filho – The Secret Agent (NEON)
Jafar Panahi – It Was Just an Accident (NEON)
Park Chan-wook – No Other Choice (NEON)
Benny Safdie – The Smashing Machine (A24)