Oscar Nominations

Female Directors Snubbed, Again, in 2019 Oscar Nominations

Despite several qualified choices, including Marielle Heller and Karyn Kusama, no female director was among the Oscar nominees.

By Nicole Sperling

January 22, 2019

In 91 years, the Oscar nominations have recognized only five women in the best-director category: Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties, 1975), Jane Campion (The Piano, 1994), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2009), and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, 2017). Bigelow is the only one who’s ever won, and no woman of color has ever been nominated.

The voting body of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did nothing Tuesday morning to change this phenomenon, once again snubbing a slew of qualified female candidates in this year’s best-director race. The most glaring omissions include Debra Granik (Leave No Trace), Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Karyn Kusama (Destroyer), Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here), and Chloé Zhao (The Rider). Heller’s oversight is particularly frustrating considering her film’s two stars, Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, both landed nominations (for lead actress and supporting actor, respectively), as did the film’s screenwriters, Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty.

“I think a lot of this is political: who’s in front of you, who’s the loudest,” said Melissa Silverstein, founder and publisher of the Web site Women and Hollywood. “It’s hard for women who make these smaller movies, like Leave No Trace and The Rider and You Were Never Really Here. They just are not the big, showy, flashy films like most of the ones that get noticed and nominated in this industry.”

In the case of Heller, Silverstein pointed to the fact that, despite accolades for her film and a continued drumbeat for her stars, the 39-year-old director was never a meaningful part of this year’s conversation.

“I didn’t see any group of people pushing for her in a significant way,” Silverstein added. “That narrative gets created and cemented so early on in the [awards] cycle. I don’t think it’s about any film not being good enough. It’s about the money it takes to launch a campaign.”

It also becomes about how much glad-handing and schmoozing potential nominees are willing to do. Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski, a surprise nominee for Amazon’s Cold War, wasn’t exactly ubiquitous on the campaign circuit. Yet, for women, it’s almost a requirement that they do the rounds, requiring a fine balance of charm and humility—somewhat similar to the calculations made by female nominees on the presidential-campaign trail.

“Greta Gerwig was everywhere last year,” added Silverstein. “There was money behind her, she had a great story, and her movie resonated with a lot of people. You see what it takes to get to the finish line, and it’s all about money and access to capital.”

Social scientists from both U.S.C.’s Annenberg School for Communication and San Diego State have been shining a light on gender disparity in filmmaking for years, and the media is focusing on it more—yet the numbers never seem to change. U.S.C.’s most recent report looked at 1,335 directors working on the top 1,200 films released between 2007 and 2018 and found that only 4.3 percent of the directors were women. Only four women helmed films in the top 100 of 2018: Ava DuVernay (A Wrinkle in Time), Kay Cannon (Blockers), Abby Kohn (I Feel Pretty), and Susanna Fogel (The Spy Who Dumped Me).

Though frustrated, Silverstein is still optimistic that change will happen.

“Twenty years ago, I worked on something called the White House Project, where we ran ads in People magazine, trying to get people to imagine voting for a female president,” she said. “Twenty years later, four fucking women are already running [in the 2020 presidential election]. That means we aren’t going to talk about their hair and who they are married to, but what their issues are. I see the possibilities. They are happening. It just takes a long time.”