CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Oscars 2023: Academy Fails to Nominate Any Female Director

IndieWire: After last year’s record-breaking Best Director win for Jane Campion — who became only the third woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Director, joining Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland” in 2021) and Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker” in 2009) — the 2023 Oscar nominations failed to nominate any women in the Best Director category. Instead, this year’s Best Director race will see Martin McDonagh, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Steven Spielberg, Todd Field, and Ruben Östlund duking it out for the honor.

2 comments:

Abby Brunner said...

As a female in this industry, it is so disappointing when the Academy for the Oscars continually prevents any time of inclusion for women or minorities in this industry. It was exciting that last year’s Oscars has so many women nominated in many different categories. But this year it seems like they have fallen into their old routine of continually picking the same type of person to be nominated. I often don’t pay much attention to the Oscars because I get angry at the misrepresentation. However, I will still sit down and watch them even though I am extremely disappointed in this year's nominations. I hope that Sarah Polley is awarded the Oscar for her work on “Women Talking”, even though she didn’t get the director nomination, I hope she gets the Best Adapted Screenplay award. I hope that in the coming years, the academy will learn to be inclusive and correct their wrongs about who they nominate each year.

Emily Carleton said...

While I am not shocked to hear once again a major award show fails to nominate marginalized people, I am disappointed. It is also surprising how few women were nominated across the board considering the amount of negative press the Oscars got after last year’s nominations. The prestigious awards’ recent history reminds us how back in 2015 and 2016 all the actors that were nominated are white. In a quick Google search of this year’s nominees, five out of the six are white, cis-gender males. The arts are supposed to be the industry that pushes against systems of oppression and brings to light the inequities of society and yet we still cannot seem to break free of its grasp. However, a minor personal result of the pandemic has led me to not see a single film that has been nominated so I cannot speak to the talents of any of these directors.