Awards season junkies take notice because this one is biggie. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) announced their picks for the years’ best achievement of direction. This years awards season has been all over the place – The Revenant won the Golden Globe, The Big Short won the Producers Guild Award, Spotlight won the Screen Actors Guild Award – marking one of the most contentious and unpredictable years in quite some time. The DGA prize typically goes in tandem with who will likely win the Best Director prize at the Academy Awards, which typically (if not always, and certainly not as often recently) aligns with eventual winner for Best Picture. The big winner was Alejandro González Iñárritu who won for The Revenant.
This marks Iñárritu’s second consecutive DGA honor as he won the same prize last year for Birdman. The nominees were Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), Adam McKay (The Big Short), George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Ridley Scott (The Martian). All but Scott were also nominated for Oscars; the Academy opted instead for Lenny Abrahamson‘s work on the indie Room in a surprise twist.
This year, DGA also added a new category for first-time directors, a prize that was won by Alex Garland for his direction of the science fiction indie breakout Ex Machina; Garland is Oscar nominated for his original screenplay. Check out the full list of film winners below:
- FEATURE FILM DIRECTOR:
- DOCUMENTARY DIRECTOR: Matthew Heineman, Cartel Land
- FIRST-TIME FEATURE DIRECTOR: Alex Garland, Ex Machina