James Mangold Gets a Nomination From the DGA for the Film A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

The Directors Guild of America Names its Nominees

James Mangold and Jacques Audiard were among the five big-name directors who scored nominations from the Directors Guild of America.

This year’s announcement of the DGA nominations came as little surprise to most but the fact that A Complete Unknown scored a nod here for its director, James Mangold, certainly helps that film’s case when it comes to it securing Academy Award nominations come Oscar time. Jacques Audiard received a nod for Emilia Pérez, one of the year’s most acclaimed films. The other nominees were pretty much expected: Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) and Edward Berger (Conclave). There were two big notable snubs by the DGA: Jon M. Chu for Wicked: Part 1 and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance.

Where does this leave the Academy Awards, especially with SAG and the DGA both falling head over heels over A Complete Unknown? Well, Brady Corbet is still the odds-on favorite to win the Best Director both with DGA and the Oscars for his work on the three hour-plus drama, The Brutalist. The DGA announcement of its nominees doesn’t necessarily throw a wrench into Wicked: Part 1‘s chances of winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards but Jon M. Chu stands very little chance of winning Best Director (if he gets nominated by the Academy) for that very “popular” blockbuster picture.

The DGA also announced its five nominees for Best First Time Directing: Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light, Megan Park for My Old Ass, RaMell Ross for Nickel Boys, Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel for Armand and Sean Wang for Dìdi. No surprises when it comes to the names of Ross and Kapadia and it’s going to be interesting to see which one of those two takes the win. Right now, it’s looking like Ross will take that prize.

2024 was a record year for great movies. It would be impossible for every fine movie to get a nomination from the Director’s Guild of America and narrowing it down to just five must have been quite difficult for the DGA. However, the fact that, once again, it was all men who were nominated in the five major Best Director slots was a bit discouraging although the DGA made up for that by nominating two women for Best First Time Direction honors: Payal Kapadia and Megan Park.

Anora‘s Sean Baker was once favored to win the Director’s Guild of America’s top honor but things have shifted quite a bit given the results of some preliminary awards and Brady Corbet should take home the big prize from the DGA for his work on the harrowing and brilliant, The Brutalist.

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