The Directors Guild of America handed its top prize for feature filmmaking to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All At Once, putting them on course to win at the Academy Awards next month.
The 75th annual DGA Awards, held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Saturday evening, denied Steven Spielberg a record-extending four wins for the guild’s top honour.
Spielberg had once been expected to cruise through awards season with his autobiographical The Fabelmans, but the strong affection for Everything Everywhere All At Once — the Oscar favourite with a leading 11 nominations — has come to dominate Hollywood’s Oscar run-up.
In the past 10 years, all but once has the DGA winner gone on to win at the Academy Awards. In 2020, Sam Mendes won at the DGA for 1917, while Bong Joon Ho won the Oscar for Parasite.
Last year, Jane Campion (The Power Of The Dog) won at each. In 75 years, only 10 times have the DGA winner and the Oscar winner not aligned.
The other nominees were: Todd Field (Tar), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick).
The same filmmakers are nominated for best director at the March 12 Oscars, with one exception. The academy picked Ruben Ostlund (Triangle Of Sadness) rather than Kosinski.
Kwan and Scheinert, the filmmaking pair known as The Daniels, are just the third duo to win the DGA’s top award, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961) and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for No Country For Old Men (2007).
No women were nominated by the DGA or the film academy for best director this year. But both of the guild’s other top awards went to female filmmakers. Best first feature went to Charlotte Wells for the father-daughter drama Aftersun. Best documentary was awarded to Sara Dosa for Fire Of Love, about an adventurous French volcanologist couple.
