FINAL 2023 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR

With the BAFTA winner (Edward Berger for All Quiet on the Western Front) not in contention here and the Golden Globe winner (Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans) being a season dud, the path is open and clear for DGA winners Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All At Once) to become only the third duo to win the award and the first since the Coen Brothers for 2007’s No Country for Old Men.

The matter of who is 2nd place or could be a spoiler feels so distant that it almost doesn’t matter who you pick. Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) is the only other director nominated to hit all precursors but none resulted in a win. Back in 2012, Steven Spielberg couldn’t win in the year Affleck was snubbed, the Academy opting for Ang Lee for a second win (with no Best Picture win again). No one can really stake much of a claim here as the biggest hurdle The Daniels had was DGA (where some people stuck to their guns for Spielberg) and they got it.

Berger winning BAFTA was actually the best case scenario for The Daniels (well, second best) as they didn’t have to lose to direct Oscar competition, the way they did at the Golden Globes (which were aired before Oscar nominations came out). There’s a reason we say the DGA such a powerful predictor. When presented with different DGA and BAFTA winners, the Academy overwhelmingly has sided with the DGA as their choice. Excluding the fractured years where they went with neither (2000, 2012, 2019), only once since 2000 did Oscar voters side with BAFTA (2002).

Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions for Best Director.

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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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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.

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