Jacques Audiard, Sean Baker, Edward Berger, Brady Corbet, and James Mangold are the 2025 Directors Guild Award nominees.
The Directors Guild announced the DGA Awards nominees on Wednesday, hours after the Screen Actors Guild Award revealed its 2025 nominations.
All nominees are first-time honorees at the Directors Guild. Audiard, a cherished French filmmaker, directed Netflix’s top awards contender, Emilia Pérez. Baker, a leading indie director of this era, helmed Neon’s wild comedy-thriller, Anora. Berger is recognized for the papal suspense film Conclave from Focus Features. Corbet, who recently won Best Director at the Golden Globes, is the 36-year-old auteur of the epic A24 release The Brutalist. Lastly, Mangold is the American veteran of the group, nominated here for A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan.
The Directors Guild is often a good barometer of future Oscar success — but it is rarely perfect. The last time the five DGA Awards matched the five filmmakers nominated for the Best Director Oscar was in 2010, when Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman, and Quentin Tarantino were nominated by both groups. Over the last 15 years, the DGA Awards frequently miss international films and directors that are embraced by the Academy’s directing branch. Notable filmmakers who scored Oscar nominations but not DGA Award nominations include Anatomy of a Fall director Justine Triet and The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer (in 2024), Triangle of Sadness auteur Ruben Ostlund (in 2023), Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (in 2022), Another Round filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg (in 2021), Cold War director Paweł Pawlikowski and The Favourite filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (in 2019), and Room director Lenny Abrahamson (in 2016). Top Hollywood auteurs who produced challenging work, like Joker director Todd Phillips (in 2020) and Phantom Thread filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (in 2018), were also nominated for Oscars without corresponding DGA Award bids.
Instead of those directors, the Directors Guild has often skewed more populist and mainstream. Last year, both Greta Gerwig for Barbie and Alexander Payne for The Holdovers received DGA Award nominations. In 2023, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski was nominated by the guild. Dune director Denis Villeneuve was nominated by the group in 2022. The Trial of the Chicago 7 director Aaron Sorkin was picked in 2021.
That recent history should raise a red flag for Mangold continuing through to the Oscars despite the industry’s clear embrace of A Complete Unknown. The Searchlight release received four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations earlier on Wednesday, including a bid for best ensemble.
In addition to the feature film nominations, the Directors Guild revealed its first-time feature filmmaker nominees on Wednesday. Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light), Megan Park (My Old Ass), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys), Halfdan Ullmann Tondel (Armand), and Sean Wang (Didi) are the nominees.
