The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has recognized Coralie Fargeat’s work for the first time, showing great support for her movie “The Substance.”
With just her second film, Coralie has achieved something big. She is the only female director nominated in the Best Director category this year, joining Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, James Mangold, and Jacques Audiard.
Her movie is also the only female-directed one nominated for Best Picture, competing with films like “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Pérez,” “I’m Still Here,” “Nickel Boys,” and “Wicked.”
Advertisement Unfortunately, other female filmmakers were left out of the awards. This includes Payal Kapadia with “All We Imagine as Light” and Halina Reijn with “Babygirl,” who didn’t receive nominations for any category.
Earlier this month, Fargeat told IndieWire at the Golden Globes that she thinks horror films deserve to be treated fairly at the Oscars.
I don’t see horror films as any different from other movies. They are so political. They are such a great way to tell so many things in a very rude way, and in a very indelicate way. To me, they should compete at the same level as everything else. I learned to accept who I was as a filmmaker, not loving writing dialogue, for instance, but expressing myself in a visual and very visceral way. And that’s when you accept who you are, and then the magic can happen. The best thing I wish for the Academy is that there is not this barrier, that every movie is considered as cinema, which I think it is.
she said
In the world of horror movies at the Oscars, only films directed by men have been recognized in the top categories before. These include William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”), Steven Spielberg (“Jaws”), Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”), M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”), Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”), and Jordan Peele (“Get Out”).
Even with Fargeat’s historic nominations, things haven’t changed much for female filmmakers at the Oscars, especially since only one woman is still being nominated in the director category.
Here’s a quick history for anyone who needs it: in 2024, only one female director was nominated for Best Director. It was Justine Triet for “Anatomy of a Fall,” and she won Best Original Screenplay. This came after two very different years for women in the category.
In 2023, no female directors were nominated at all. But in 2022, Jane Campion made history with her win for “The Power of the Dog.” She became the only third woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Director, after Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”).
The latest USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study doesn’t show a drop in inclusion, but it does say that progress in finding, supporting, and hiring Hollywood directors who aren’t white men has stopped improving. Out of 112 directors studied (from the top 100 movies of 2024), 13.4 percent—or 15—were women, which is almost the same as 2023’s 12.1 percent. While there has been some improvement since 2007, when only 2.7 percent of directors were women, over 18 years, only 6.5 percent of directors have been women.
On our own list of big studio movies by women directors, we found only 14 films coming from female filmmakers over the next two years. Hopefully, Fargeat will announce another new movie soon to help boost those numbers.
Also Read: Coralie Fargeat Says There Will Not Be A Sequel To ‘THE SUBSTANCE’
On Oscar nomination morning, some female filmmakers did get recognized in other categories. Two women were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay: French filmmaker Léa Mysius for “Emilia Pérez” (she was listed as one of three collaborators with Jacques Audiard) and Joslyn Barnes, who shared writing credit with “Nickel Boys” director RaMell Ross (she also produced the film).
For Best Original Screenplay, Mona Fastvold, co-writer of “The Brutalist,” was nominated alongside Brady Corbet (her partner in both film and life). Fargeat was also nominated in this category for her “Substance” screenplay.
In the Best Documentary Feature Film category, three movies directed by women were nominated: Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries,” Rachel Szor’s “No Other Land” (co-directed with Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham), and Emily Kassie’s “Sugarcane” (co-directed with Julian Brave NoiseCat).
Unfortunately, the Best Animated Feature Film and Best International Film categories didn’t include any women-directed movies.
In the 96 years of the Academy Awards, only eight women have ever been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmüller (1976′s “Seven Beauties”), Sofia Coppola (2003′s “Lost in Translation”), Greta Gerwig (2017′s “Lady Bird”), Emerald Fennell (2020’s “Promising Young Woman”), Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao, Jane Campion, and Justine Triet. Jane Campion, who made “The Power of the Dog,” is the only woman nominated twice.
In 2021, two women were nominated for the first time in the same year. Chloé Zhao won Best Director and Best Picture for “Nomadland,” making her the second woman to win Best Director after Bigelow. Emerald Fennell also won that year for Best Original Screenplay for “Promising Young Woman.”
This year’s Oscars nominations voting ended on January 17 after being delayed due to the wildfires in Los Angeles. Final voting will happen between February 11 and 18, 2025. The 97th Oscars will be broadcast live on ABC on Sunday, March 2. Emmy-winning late-night host Conan O’Brien will host the ceremony for the first time.
Source: Indiewire