Directors Guild: Women rule as Emerald Fennell, Regina King, Chloé Zhao, Radha Blank earn history-making nominations (DGA)

Erik Anderson March 9, 2021

The nominations 73rd Directors Guild of America (DGA) were announced on Tuesday and for the first time ever, two women, Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), are nominated in the top film category. Zhao is also the first Chinese-American woman ever nominated by the DGA.

Fennell and Zhao are just the 9th and 10th women ever nominated by the DGA. As with the Oscars, Lina Wertmüller was first for 1975’s Seven Beauties. Then came Randa Haines (1985’s Children of a Lesser God), Barbra Streisand (1990’s Prince of Tides), Jane Campion (1993’s The Piano), Sofia Coppola (2003’s Lost in Translation), Valerie Faris (2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, shared with Jonathan Dayton), Kathryn Bigelow (2009’s The Hurt Locker and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty) and Greta Gerwig (2017’s Lady Bird). Wertmüller, Campion, Coppola, Bigelow (for The Hurt Locker) and Gerwig are the only to translate their DGA nominations into Oscar nominations. Bigelow is still the only woman ever to win DGA or the directing Oscar, both for The Hurt Locker.

Earlier this morning, BAFTA dropped its nominations, also setting a record in their directing category with four women nominated in a field of six.

Also nominated in the category with Fennell and Zhao were Lee Isaac Chung for Minari, David Fincher for Mank and Aaron Sorkin for The Trial of the Chicago 7. Of those men, only Chung earned a BAFTA nomination this morning.

In the First-Time Feature category, Regina King (One Night in Miami) and Radha Blank (The Forty-Year Old Version) are nominated alongside Fernando Frías de la Parra (I’m No Longer Here). The category has three people of color for the first time in its six years of existence.

There have been four women previously nominated for first-time director: Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim) and Alma Har’el (Honey Boy), who won last year.

Here are the nominations for the 73rd Directors Guild of America (DGA) awards. Winners will be announced on April 10 after a full month of voting, which begins tomorrow.

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (A24)
Unit Production Manager: Dylan Brodie
First Assistant Director: Jeff Dubray
Second Assistant Director: Ann Laudick
Second Second Assistant Director: Stephen J. Hanan
Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
Unit Production Manager: Reena Magsarili Raasch
First Assistant Director: Michael T. Meador
Second Assistant Director: Alexander Armero
Second Second Assistant Director: Anthony Manzo
David Fincher, Mank (Netflix)Unit Production Manager: Allen Kupetsky
First Assistant Director: Richard Goodwin
Second Assistant Director: Samantha McGrady
Second Second Assistant Director: Matt McKinnon
Additional Second Assistant Directors: Jeff Goodell, John Stern, George Williams III
Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Unit Production Managers: Charles Miller, Stuart M. Besser, Jonathan Shoemaker
First Assistant Director: Joseph P. Reidy
Second Assistant Director: Rachel Jaros
Second Second Assistant Director: Justin Bischoff
Location Managers: Dennis Voskov, Nick Rafferty (Chicago Unit)
Chloé Zhao, Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
Unit Production Manager: Mary Kerrigan
First Assistant Director: Mary Kerrigan

Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director

Radha Blank, The Forty-Year-Old Version (Netflix)
Unit Production Manager: James Price
First Assistant Director: Michael L. Walker
Second Assistant Director: Kenyon Noble
Second Second Assistant Director: Jonathan Santos
Location Managers: Katarina Dedicova, Tim Stacker
Fernando Frías de la Parra, I’m No Longer Here (Netflix)
Production Managers: Martín Pérez Valle, Assia Fratz (New York Unit)
First Assistant Director: Carlos Suazo
Second Assistant Directors: Alí Santiago, Alex Burstein (New York Unit)
Second Second Assistant Directors: Karen Alcázar, Anthony James Faure (New York Unit)
Regina King, One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
Unit Production Manager: Paul O. Davis
First Assistant Director: Mark Anthony Little
Second Assistant Director: Kevin O’Neil
Darius Marder, Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
Unit Production Manager: Amy Greene
First Assistant Director: Matthew Vose Campbell
Florian Zeller, The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
First Assistant Director: George Every
Second Assistant Director: Jamie D. Allen

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries

Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss – Boys State (A24/Apple TV Plus)
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw – The Truffle Hunters (Sony Pictures Classics)
Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed – My Octopus Teacher (Netflix)
Benjamin Ree – The Painter and the Thief (Neon/Elevation Pictures)
David France – Welcome to Chechnya (HBO)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.