In 2010 the academy reintroduced the preferential ballot to decide the Best Picture winner. Over the ensuing 14 years, there has been a difference between the winners of that award and Best Director at six Academy Awards ceremonies. Prior to this such splits were fairly rare. Why the change? (Scroll down for our updated 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Director.)
At the Oscars, the winner of Best Picture is determined by a weighted ballot and the outcomes of the other 22 races, including Best Director, are decided by a popular vote. While voters simply select one nominee in those other races, when it comes to Best Picture they are asked to rank all the nominees. If one contender garners more than 50% of the first-place votes, it wins. If, however, no nominee crosses that threshold, the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, with its ballots being reapportioned to the second-place pick. This process continues until one nominee reaches 50% plus one vote. The goal, says the academy, is to award the Best Picture award to a consensus choice.
With two different voting systems, it’s easy to understand how often there is split between the winners of Best Picture and Best Director. In 2022, Jane Campion won Best Director for “The Power of the Dog” but “CODA” was named Best Picture. In 2019 Alfonso Cuaron won Best Director for “Roma” only to see his film eclipsed in the top race by “Green Book.” That had happened to Cuaron in 2014 as well when he won for “Gravity” but Best Picture went to “12 Years a Slave.” And while Ang Lee (“Life of Pi”), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“The Revenant”) and Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”) all won the Best Director Oscar, their films lost to “Argo” (2013), “Spotlight” (2016) and “Moonlight” (2017) respectively.
Inarritu also won Best Director for a film that took the top Academy Award: “Birdman” (2015). As with “The Revenant,” this also was a bravura directorial achievement and had strong support throughout the creative categories. When it comes to Best Director, bigger is better as was seen last year when Christopher Nolan prevailed for helming the Best Picture champ “Oppenheimer.”
Nolan continued a five-year streak of first-time winners following Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everything All at Once”), Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), and Bong Joon-ho (“Parasite”).
Kwan and Scheinert won on their first-ever nomination in this category, as did Zhao and Joon-ho as well as 2017 winner Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”), who is the youngest winner in this category (32). The oldest winner was Clint Eastwood when he won when he was 74 in 2005 for “Million Dollar Baby.”
John Ford holds the record for the most victories in this category. He won for “The Informer” in 1936, “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1941, “How Green Was My Valley” in 1942, and “The Quiet Man” in 1953. William Wyler has the most citations in this category with 12 while Scorsese (10) and Steven Spielberg (9) are close behind.
But that’s all history. What about the future? Which filmmakers could be nominated for Best Director this year? Scroll down below for a list of directors we think could compete for Best Director at the 2025 Oscars.
Please note: To read full descriptions of each film, check out our 2025 Oscar Predictions for Best Picture.
LEADING CONTENDERS
Jacques Audiard, “Emilia Pérez” (Pathé)
Sean Baker, “Anora” (Neon)
Edward Berger, “Conclave” (Focus Features)
Marielle Heller, “Nightbitch” (Searchlight)
Greg Kwedar, “Sing Sing” (A24)
Steve McQueen, “Blitz” (Apple TV+)
Ridley Scott, “Gladiator II” (Paramount Pictures)
Denis Villeneuve, “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.)
STRONG CONTENDERS
Pedro Almodóvar, “The Room Next Door” (Warner Bros.)
Clint Eastwood, “Juror #2” (Warner Bros.)
Robert Eggers, “Nosferatu” (Focus Features)
Todd Phillips, “Joker: Folie à Deux” (Warner Bros.)
RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios)
Mohammad Rasoulof, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Films Boutique)
Robert Zemeckis, “Here” (Sony Pictures)
POSSIBLE CONTENDERS
Francis Ford Coppola, “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate)
Coralie Forgeat, “The Substance” (Mubi)
Alex Garland, “Civil War” (A24)
Luca Guadagnino, “Challengers” (Amazon MGM Studios/Warner Bros.)
Yorgos Lanthimos, “Kinds of Kindness” (Searchlight)
Payal Kapadia, “Al We Imagine as Light” (Condor Entertainment/September Film)
Mike Leigh, “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street)
George Miller, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (Warner Bros.)
Sean Wang, “Didi” (Focus Features)
Malcolm Washington, “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix)
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