TheAcademy Awardshave their detractors and defenders, but even the biggest fans of the ceremony may grow tired of seeing the same names on the nominees list year after year. Some Hollywood creatives just seem to have the blessing of the Academy no matter what, earning a nomination practically any time they decide to make another movie. But while the voting body has often been accused of stodginess and a lack of diversity, efforts to correct things on those fronts have yielded some exciting results.
Recent ceremonies have seen a more diverse and interesting array of movies take home a statuette or two, likeParasite’ssurprise clean-up at the 2020 awards, orEverything Everywhere All At Once’sbig wins for weirdo sci-fi fans everywhere in 2023. The 2025 nominations were recently announced, and while there aren’t too many big surprises with what movies are being recognized, one race in particular is shaping up in a way that hasn’t been seen in nearly 30 years: Best Director.
What’s So Special About Best Director This Year?
For the first time in nearly three decades, the Best Director category at the Oscars this year is made up of all first-time nominees. This year,Anora’sSean Baker,The Brutalist’sBrady Corbet,The Substance’sCoralie Fargeat,A Complete Unknown’sJames Mangold, andEmilia Pérez’sJacques Audiard make up the five nominees vying for the golden statuette. All of these movies and filmmakers have been doing very well on the awards circuit this year, so none of these nominations are entirely surprising, but the fact that there are no repeats adds an extra layer of excitement to the proceedings.
The last time this happened was at the 70th Academy Awards back in 1998, whichhonored the films of 1997. At that time, the nominees were James Cameron forTitanic,Gus Van Sant forGood Will Hunting,Peter Cattaneo forThe Full Monty,Curtis Hanson forL.A. Confidential,and Atom Egoyan forThe Sweet Hereafter.That year, basically nothing could stopTitanic,which took home the top prizes for director and picture along with nine more trophies.
Interestingly,there are plenty of parallels to be found between these two sets of nominees. Both have a sweeping historical epic (TitanicandThe Brutalist), a slice-of-life indie comedy (The Full MontyandAnora), a mid-20th Century period piece (L.A. ConfidentialandA Complete Unknown), and a foreign-born filmmaker making a splash stateside (The Sweet HereafterandEmilia Pérez/The Substance). The only one that doesn’t correlate isGood Will Hunting,though it could be argued that both it andThe Substancerepresentdaring indie voicesgetting a chance at the mainstream.
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How Will the Race Shake Out?
A big part of why this year’s awards race has been such a fun one to watch is that there hasn’t really been a clear frontrunner, or the kind of movie that really represents the typical “Oscar bait.“Emilia Pérezis the most nominated and most polarizing, and it’s refreshingly a movie that takes real risks and isn’t afraid to alienate its audience, which is not usually the kind of movie the Academy goes for. After taking home the top prize for drama at the Golden Globes, it would seem like the most obvious frontrunner for Best Picture, thoughother movies likeThe BrutalistorA Complete Unknownfeel more like the typical “Oscar movie.”
Much like their movies, none of the nominated directors necessarily feel like a shoo-in. Corbet took home the Golden Globe and could easily repeat his victory at the Oscars, but the Academy might opt not to split the bill ifEmilia Péreztakes Best Picture.It would be exciting for such an uncompromising filmmaker as Fargeat to take home a win, but victory forThe Substanceseems unlikely outside of maybe a win for Demi Moore, and even that would be more for the story behind it than for the performance itself.Anorais the most cinephile-beloved film on the list, taking home the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival as well as a slew of other awards, though the Academy doesn’t have a great track record of awarding these kinds of arthouse films, give or take aMoonlight.
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It’s no secret that Hollywood is in a time of major transition right now, with the effects of the pandemic and the 2023 strikes still being felt, and streamers continuing to upend traditional business models. With the lack of a clear awards juggernaut likeOppenheimer,the nominees reflect this sense of upheaval. Butthe exciting thing about this is that nearly all the nominated directors took real risks with their works, whether in the form of adeliberately abrasive movie musicalabout a transgender cartel boss, a movie so long it needed an intermission, a squirm-inducing body horror movie with a feminist bent, or a grounded look at the lives of sex workers. A biopic about the early days of one of the most famous living musicians might not be quite as risky, but even if Hollywood is in the midst of a sea change, some old habits die hard.
