Christopher Nolan Wins DGA Award, Putting Him on Track for the Oscar

The Directors Guild of America on Saturday night time handed its high prize for feature-film directing to Christopher Nolan for his hit biopic, “Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy because the physicist who helped design the atomic bomb. This is the most recent main trophy Nolan’s movie has received, after taking high honors from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards final month.

“The idea that my peers would think that I deserve this means everything to me,” the 53-year-old director stated in his acceptance speech.

Though that is Nolan’s first DGA win, he’s a favourite of the guild and has acquired 4 different nominations that stretch again to his 2001 breakthrough, “Memento.” This yr he was up in opposition to the filmmakers Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) and Martin Scorsese, whose nod for “Killers of the Flower Moon” — his eleventh from this group — made him the guild’s second-most-nominated filmmaker after Steven Spielberg.

Nolan is broadly thought-about the front-runner for one of the best director Oscar, a bid that was solely strengthened by his victory right here, because the DGA winner has gone on to take dwelling the Oscar 18 of the final 20 instances. At the Academy Awards subsequent month, he’ll as soon as once more face off in opposition to Scorsese and Lanthimos, although Oscars voters swapped Gerwig and Payne for Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”) and Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”).

Judd Apatow, who hosted the DGA Awards, alluded to Gerwig’s headline-making Oscar snub in a joke about how issues may have been worse: “I’ve never even been mentioned in an article about the people who got snubbed!” he stated.

The DGA prize for one of the best first-time director went to Celine Song, whose romantic drama, “Past Lives,” was nominated for greatest image on the Oscars. This award has gone to a feminine filmmaker three years in a row, a primary for this group, with Song following within the footsteps of Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”).

“The best way I can honor this incredible recognition for my very first film is to promise that I’ll keep directing films as best as I can for as long as I can,” Song stated. “I’m going to keep going. Thank you so much!”

Here are the highest winners. For the whole listing, together with actuality exhibits and kids’s programming, go to dga.org.

Film

Feature

Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”

Read an interview with the director.

First-Time Feature

Celine Song, “Past Lives”

Read our assessment.

Documentary

Mstyslav Chernov, “20 Days in Mariupol”

Read our assessment.

Television

Drama Series

“The Last of Us,” Peter Hoar (for the episode “Long, Long Time”)

Comedy Series

“The Bear,” Christopher Storer (“Fishes”)

Television Movies and Limited Series

“Lessons in Chemistry,” Sarah Adina Smith (“Her and Him”)