The Oscars Finally Invited Women to the Best Directors Table, But Will They Keep It Up?

It’s hard to know exactly how 2020 will be remembered in Hollywood history books of the future, but it seems certain it will be significant. Maybe 2020 will be remembered as the year that broke movie theaters, as studios embrace new kinds of release strategies. Or maybe it will be remembered as the year elite film festivals became accessible in a way never before dreamed possible.  But maybe, just maybe, it will also be remembered as a historic turning point for women directors.

Two women—Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)—were nominated for Best Director at the Oscars this year. Zhao, who is Chinese, is also the first woman of color ever nominated in the category. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like a big deal. But when put in the context of the show’s 93-year history, in which a grand total of seven women directors have ever—ever—been nominated—it really, really is.

Melissa Silverstein, who has been covering the gender gap in the industry for 15 years as the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood, admitted she “kind of hyperventilated a little” when she saw the director nominations for the 2021 Oscars. “It was wonderful.”

But advocates for a more inclusive Oscar ceremony have been faked out before. The 2018 nominations for Best Director—which included Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and Jordan Peele (Get Out)—felt like proof that the Academy’s attempt to diversify its membership had actually worked. Then, the very next year, Green Book—a film heavily criticized for its outdated take on racism—won Best Picture. The year after that, Gerwig failed to earn a Best Director nod for Little Women in what many considered the biggest snub of the year. The progress—if it was even happening—felt maddeningly slow.

But this year, women directors have finally been invited to the table in a way they never have been before. So now the question is: Will the Academy keep it up?

Silverstein thinks it’s “too early to say” whether this year will be remembered as a turning point for women, and added that the role of the COVID-19 pandemic should not be underestimated when considering this year’s nominations.

“2020 is always going to be a year with an asterisk on it,” she said. “It’s important to acknowledge the good things that have happened in this difficult time period—we were able to see a lot of the women’s works without all the noise that surrounds everything. Some of the big men whose movies [would have come out in 2020] were able to hold them, because they had a lot more power. Smartly, Fox Searchlight and Nomadland saw this as a moment and saw that Nomadland would fit into the COVID cultural conversation. Same thing with Promising Young Woman.”

But Silverstein is less certain that women will be able to rise above the crowd next year, too. “In 2021, you’re going to see a lot of those movies that were supposed to come out in 2020. I am worried that we’re going to see fewer female-directed movies.”

That said, there are already a few potential candidates. Janicza Bravo’s buzzy A24 drama Zola made a splash on social media with its trailer debut last month, a stylish interpretation of a real-life 148-tweet viral Twitter thread. Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion is currently in production on an adaption of the 1967 novel The Power of the Dog, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, set to release on Netflix this year. And Sian Heder received near-universal praise for her coming-of-age film CODA, which premiered virtually at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Festival’s U.S. Grand Jury Prize, U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, a Special Jury Ensemble Cast Award, and Best Director in the U.S. Dramatic section for Heder.

“It’s so tricky to talk about awards,” Heder told Decider with a laugh. “Of course, I would love CODA to be in the Oscar conversation, but it feels so presumptuous to think that it will be.”

Heder sees a lot of hope in the nods for Nomadland and Promising Young Woman, though. “What I love about them is that you also can’t pigeonhole the idea of ‘female filmmakers’ based on those two movies, because they’re so radically different from each other. They really feel like auteur pieces. One is an almost documentary style in its approach, its realism. The other one is this heightened, stylistic fable that’s constantly reminding you that you’re in a narrative.”

Silverstein pointed to Promising Young Woman‘s nominations, in particular, as “a clear indicator of how the Academy has changed. If it was all old white men, they would be like, ‘No way!’ This is a movie that highlights toxic masculinity. And Hollywood is rife with toxic masculinity.”

Much of those changes are thanks to the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, the viral hashtag created by April Reign in 2015 that shamed the Academy into a promise to double the number of women and underrepresented ethnic and racial communities of its membership by 2020. In a statement last year, President David Rubin said the Academy surpassed both of those goals. The number of women members in the Academy doubled from 1,446 in 2015, to 3,179 in 2020—but only members of the directors’ branch of the Academy are able to nominate filmmakers for Best Director.

There are two ways to become an Academy member: Get nominated for an Oscar, or receive a special invitation. And, until this year, only five women had been nominated as directors: Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (The Piano), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird). The Academy did not respond to Decider’s request when asked how many women members make up its directors’ branch, but Silverstein knows that number is much higher than it used to be.

“When I first started doing this work,” Silverstein said, “I had a little list of all the women who were in the directing branch. There weren’t a lot. It was under 40 or so. I could count them. And now there’s no way to keep up that list.”

Heder feels similarly encouraged by the change she’s seen in the industry in the last two years. Her big break came in 2005, when she was selected for the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women. There, she directed a short film that would eventually become the basis of her first feature, Tallulah. The program was launched in 1974 as a way to give voice to more women in Hollywood, but, Heder says, “I think the number [of women directors in Hollywood] were equivalent in 2005, when I did that workshop, to what they were in the ’70s. There hadn’t been a big jump forward. But I have seen a big jump forward in the past two years.”

She continued, “The combination of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements feel like they’ve actually created radical, lasting change. I have watched a lot of women director friends who were struggling for a long time finally book their first episode of TV. I’ve seen careers be launched in the last two years.”

Tallulah—a dark comedy starring Elliot Page as a homeless teenager who impulsively steals a baby—released on Netflix in 2016, and was well-received by those who watched it. But it wasn’t a part of the awards conversation that year. CODA—a remake of a French film about a teenage girl who is the only hearing member of her deaf family—was the clear breakout hit of this year’s Sundance. It sold to Apple for a price just above $25 million, a festival acquisition record. A lot can happen between now and next year’s Oscars, but, at least for now, CODA is in a good position for 2022 awards buzz.

“The thing that awards do is they give movies longevity,” Heder, who is not a member of the Academy, noted. “It’s not just about the release, it’s about the conversation ongoing. I’m certainly hoping the actors in CODA will be recognized, because they’ve delivered incredible performances. The Academy has a history of nominating non-disabled actors playing disabled roles. I really hope that they can make progress on all fronts.”

Heder’s hesitancy to talk about her own chances at next year’s Oscars mirrors the attitude of Zhao, who, after a slew of wins, is currently the frontrunner for Best Director. Silverstein sees Zhao as “very special, and hopefully is someone who is going to have a career where she is nominated for many different things. But I also think she gives zero fucks about that. All she does is talk about the other people when she accepts awards!”

It’s a philosophy that Silverstein sees as unusual for a director doing the awards circuit—gratitude is a must, of course, but so is talking about yourself. A lot. How else does one carve out a career as an auteur, in which someday the entire marketing campaign for your film will be your name? (“The ninth film from Quentin Tarantino,” or “Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman,” for example.)

Heder, meanwhile, wrestled with the idea of claiming a “film by” credit for CODA.

“You sort of feel like ‘It’s not by me, it’s by all these people. It’s my DP, it’s my actors, it’s my editor.’ A ‘film by’ seems to create this kind of sole ownership of the project that feels like it cuts out so many important people.” Heder did ultimately take the credit, which was in her contract. “As a director, it is my vision, and it is my voice pushing everything forward. I’m incredibly hands-on. I have my fingers in every part of the process. And it’s a real acknowledgment that I’ve built this team. But I think there are probably a lot of male directors out there that don’t even bat an eye at [a ‘film by’ credit].”

But maybe it’s time for that strategy to change.

“The award season has been completely based on how men act,” Silverstein said. “It’s always hard for us to challenge things when there’s only been one way of doing things for so long. But I feel like the gauntlet has been placed down by Chloé Zhao and others.” She added, “We have to shift the perception of what a director looks like.”

Both Heder and Silverstein are hopeful for the future recognition of women directors, but they don’t see change happening overnight.

“This industry has been so male and so white for so long, that the awards system has felt like a manifestation of that closed loop,” Heder said. “It’s really just about hiring women and giving them the shot to make movies. The more that happens, the more half of the great movies are directed by women.  But I think it’s going to take a long time to make that correction because it’s been so off-balance for so long.”

“I’ve been doing this work for almost 15 years,” Silverstein said. “There were women fighting before who couldn’t get any traction. Women couldn’t get jobs. Nobody cared. But what we’re seeing now is an opening up of acceptable narratives—narratives that can get funded, different people’s points of views, different ways of doing things.”

But, she added, “We all have to really be open to the fact that 2021 might not look as good as 2020. And that’s okay.”

Where to watch Nomadland

Where to watch Promising Young Woman