Most Oscar prognosticators had their money on Greta Gerwig landing her second Best Director Oscar nomination. She did direct “Barbie,” after all — the biggest movie of the year and one of the best reviewed. But in the end, it was not to be.
Instead (and it really does feel like the Academy does an “either or” with women in this category), Justine Triet scored a nod for “Anatomy of a Fall,” a widely praised film that also received nods for Best Picture, best actress, original screenplay and editing nods. The movie, starring Best Actress nominee Sandra Hüller, also won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in May.
Triet is the eighth woman to be nominated in the directing category, following Lina Wertmüller (“Seven Beauties,” 1975), Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation,” 2003), Kathryn Bigelow (who won for “The Hurt Locker” in 2008), Greta Gerwig (“Ladybird,” 2018), Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman,” 2021), Chloé Zhao (who won for “Nomadland” in 2021), and Jane Campion, who was nominated for “The Piano” in 1994 and “The Power of the Dog” in 2022, the latter of which she won.
Campion is the only woman to be nominated twice for Best Director. Only once in the 97-year history of the Academy have two women been nominated in the director category in the same year: Zhao and Fennell in 2021.
Triet is the first French woman to receive a Best Director nod and the first French filmmaker since Damien Chazelle (who is French-American) won for 2016’s “La La Land.” Of the 10 total Best Director nominees from France (starting with Jean Renoir in 1945), the last three won: In addition to Chazelle, Michel Hazanavicius took the statuette in 2012 for “The Artist” and in 2002, Roman Polanski won for “The Pianist.”
Aside from Gerwig, there were several other prominent women directors who didn’t make the final cut on Tuesday: Ava DuVernay (“Origin”), Sofia Coppola (“Priscilla”), Celine Song (“Past Lives”) and Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”).
Read the full list of 2024 Academy Award nominees here.
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