The Best Director is always an interesting category to follow at the Oscars – not only because the 5 final nominees tend to the strongest indication of the 5 strongest films in the race (and in the old Academy system, since there were only 5 Best Picture nominees, both categories went 5 for 5 in many instances) but also because the nominating directing branch is one of the smallest and most eccentric and elitist branches. They go against the buzz, the campaigns and the general consensus more often than not (see the 2013 and 2016 nominations) and they tend to favor specific type of directorial achievements.
In the past few years, typically rewarded directorial achievements were either ‘spectacle’ films with scope and quality (Life of Pi, Gravity, The Revenant) or films that are artistic but also with complex execution (Birdman, La La Land) over films that may be acclaimed and beloved by AMPAS but are seen as more grounded dramas (Spotlight, 12 Years A Slave, Moonlight most recently). In fact, if the past 3 Oscar races showed us anything, it’s that Best Picture often goes to the consensus ‘no-one-hates-it’ film while the Director Oscar can go to slightly more polarizing or unconventional works (The Revenant, La La Land) even if they don’t end up getting the big prize.
This year, the Best Director race is particularly interesting. So far it doesn’t look as stacked as last year – but that all could change as soon as TIFF hits – but the intrigue comes from having two very strong Best Picture frontrunners (at the moment) and both are spectacle films with scope and complex execution that make them notable achievements that will surely be on top of voters’ minds come Oscar time: Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water which was very well received at Telluride and Venice.
Which of these two can be the frontrunner in the category as of now?
The Case for Christopher Nolan
The Case for Guillermo del Toro
So who has the edge?
As for now, it looks like AMPAS could split the awards to reward both helmers – by awarding Nolan the Director prize while rewarding del Toro in the Screenplay category. Something similar happened two years ago when McCarthy won the Screenplay award for Spotlight where Iñárritu got his second Directing Oscar for The Revenant.
READ: 2018 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (September)
[author title=”Mina Takla” image=”http://i63.tinypic.com/33f730i.jpg”]Mina Takla is a foreign correspondent for AwardsWatch and the co-founder of The Syndicate, an online news agency that offers original content services to several film brands including Empire Magazine’s Middle East edition and the Dubai Film Festival. Takla has attended, covered and written from over 10 film festivals online including the Dubai International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Cannes, Venice and Annecy Film Festivals. He been following the Oscar race since 2000 with accurate, office-pool winning predictions year after year. He writes monthly in Empire Arabia, the Arabic version of the world’s top cinema magazine and conducts press junkets with Hollywood stars in the UK and the US. He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Marketing from Australia’s Wollongong University and is currently based in Dubai, UAE. [/author]
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