Director Christopher Nolan was crowned on Saturday night with the main award of the 76th edition of the Directors Guild of America Awards (DGA) for the film ‘Oppenheimer’, thereby reaffirming his title as the favorite of the next edition of the Oscars.
This is the first award that the director of ‘Memento’ has received from his guild, after having been nominated four times in previous editions.
“I can’t leave the stage without making it clear to you how much this means to me, thank you very much,” said the director when receiving the medal from the 2023 winners, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
Nolan’s triumph over Yorgos Lanthimos, nominated for his work in ‘Poor Things’, and veteran director Martin Scorsese, for ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’, strengthens its path to the next Hollywood Academy Awards, since the film that follows the story of the creator of the atomic bomb is nominated in 13 sections.
The rest of the candidates for the highest award of the recognitions awarded by the filmmakers’ union were Greta Gerwig, author of ‘Barbie’, and Alexander Payne, responsible for ‘The Holdovers’.
The non-televised gala was held at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California, in an atmosphere of celebration after a difficult year for the industry that was hit hard by strikes by the Hollywood screenwriters’ and actors’ unions.
“Last year was really fucking challenging and now we’re on our way back,” said DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter during the meeting.
Korean-American director Celine Song received the award for best new director for her film ‘Past Lives’, which is about the reunion of two childhood best friends in their adult lives.
“I promise to continue directing films the best way I can,” said the 36-year-old filmmaker.
While the award for documentary direction was awarded to Mstyslav Chernov for ’20 Days In Mariupol’, which exposes the work of a group of Ukrainian journalists who seek to document the atrocities of the Russian invasion in the besieged city. from Mariupol, Ukraine.
“Today the town where I was born was bombed, it is a sad day, and at the same time standing here makes me recognize the power of cinema, because when those people run away from the bombs they sit in the basement and watch movies (… ) Cinema helps us endure an unbearable world and leads us to a better future,” said Chernov.
The filmmakers’ union also recognized the career of director David Nutter and during the gala, some of the leading actors of the nominated films such as Ryan Gosling (‘Barbie’), Cillian Murphy (‘Oppenheimer), Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo (‘Poor Things’), took the microphone to recognize their directors with emotional words.
In the television sections, the director of ‘The Last of Us’ Peter Hoar beat the directors of the multi-award-winning series ‘Succession’ in the drama category, the comedy category was won by Christopher Storer for directing an episode of the series ‘The Bear ‘, while Sarah Adina Smith did the same for the limited series ‘Lessons In Chemistry’.