No Women Are Nominated For Directing In 92nd Oscars

Issa Rae didn’t let the fact that no women were nominated for a Directing Oscar go unnoticed

The Oscars have once again gone the extremely predictable route of ignoring female directors when it comes to honoring them for their work. A fact that didn’t escape complete gift to Hollywood, Issa Rae, who helped announce the nominees this morning. Five movies, all with male directors, are vying for the Directing statue, and Rae is clearly not here for this gigantic injustice.

After reading off the names of the male director noms and their respective movies, Rae deadpans “Congratulations to those men” in a way that lets viewers know her wording (and accompanying not-here-for-it facial expression) was 4000 percent intentional. Because honestly, what the hell.

Just look at all those manly names. RAGE.

And as usual, there will be people who stomp and insist that these just must be the five best directors from the past year’s film offerings and LOL whoops, it just so happens that none of them are women. To that I say, HAVE YOU SEEN LITTLE WOMEN?

I mean, this is just enraging. Depressing. Full-on sad. Does this paltry list of female Directing nominees from the literal entire history of the Academy have you convinced that there’s something more at play here than merely the best directors always happening to be men? Feels a little bit not like a coincidence when you consider the Academy’s 92-year history, right? Still not sold? I present to you all five female nominees ever in Oscar history, a number over the course of 92 years that you can actually count on one hand.

• 1976 – (ITA) Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties
• 1993 – (NZ) Jane Campion for The Piano
• 2003 – (USA) Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation
• 2009 – (USA) Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker
• 2017 – (USA) Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird

And once again, not to labor the point but, HAVE YOU SEEN LITTLE WOMEN?

Of course, Greta Gerwig isn’t the only woman director left out in the cold by the Academy this year. The Farewell’s Lulu Wang, Hustlers’ Lorene Scafaria and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’s Marielle Heller were all snubbed as well. They were also skipped over for the SAG Awards, BAFTAs and Golden Globes. Heavy sigh.

Since I struggle in general to stay up past 9pm, I was only able to catch The Irishman (thank you, streaming networks) and an early evening showing of Little Women. I’m no film critic, but trust when I say that Gerwig was entirely deserving of this nomination as I suspect a number of other female directors were. The fact that in the whole history of this awards show only ONE female director has won is frankly a travesty, but of course, not at all unexpected. This is how it always goes.

If you want to fully feel the rage and watch the entire reading of nominations including Rae’s brilliant and subtle calling out of the lack of female Directing nominees, the full video is here.