The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced its nominees in its two Theatrical Feature Film categories: “Outstanding Directorial Achievement” and the nominees for the “Michael Apted Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film.” The 76th Annual DGA Awards will take place on Saturday, February 10, 2024.
All five of the nominees in the main Feature Film category had been in the conversation for many months, with the nominees being (in alphabetical order by surname):
Greta Gerwig for Barbie
Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things
Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
Alexander Payne for The Holdovers, and
Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon
All but Lanthimos are previous nominees, but noticeably absent was previous nominee Bradley Cooper for Maestro, who had been nominated by other groups including the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards. Alexander Payne, who seemed to be on the cusp after not receiving a Golden Globe nomination, received his third nomination by DGA, although Nolan probably remains the favorite.
The DGA is notorious for often going 5 for 5 with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ directing branch, although the Oscar nominations for director will often include one or two international filmmakers who were not nominated by the DGA. Ruben Östlund, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Thomas Vinterberg, and both Yorgos Lanthimos and Paweł Pawlikowski (in the same year) were nominated by the Academy but not the DGA.
Nominees for first-time feature were (also in alphabetical order):
Cord Jefferson for American Fiction
Manuella Martin for Chile ’76
Noori Miasari for Shayda?
A.V. Rockwell for A Thousand and One, and
Celine Song for Past Lives
