Golden Globes: Women Directors Shut Out of 2023 Nominations

When the Golden Globes return on Jan. 10 to air live on NBC, there will be no chance for a woman to take the stage to accept a directing award for a motion picture at the Beverly Hilton.

For the first time since the 2020 show, no woman was nominated in the best director category. That’s despite a buzzy awards year for several female filmmakers, including The Woman King’s Gina Prince-Bythewood and Women Talking‘s Sarah Polley. Other directors in the contention discussion have included Till‘s Chinonye Chukwu and She Said‘s Maria Schrader.

Polley, who both directed and wrote her feature, was nominated in the best screenplay category with Women Talking‘s composer Hildur Guðnadóttir also being recognized in the best original score competition. The Woman King garnered a leading actress nomination for Viola Davis, while She Said landed a supporting actress nom for Carey Mulligan. Till was completely shut out.

None of the live action best picture nominees — in either the drama or musical/comedy categories — were helmed by women either. (Filmmaker Domee Shi, however, garnered a best animated feature nomination for Disney’s Turning Red.)

The 2023 directing nominees — Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans), James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water), Baz Luhrmann (Elvis), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) —  are also predominantly white, with Kwan becoming only the fifth director of Asian descent to be nominated in the category and only the third potential Asian winner, behind Ang Lee and Chloé Zhao.

This year’s nominations mark the first time women have been completely shut out of the category following two consecutive years of progress in honoring and awarding female directors. In 2022, Jane Campion — who was nominated for Power of the Dog alongside The Lost Daughter‘s Maggie Gyllenhaal — took home the Globe win. In 2021, three women were nominated: Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, Regina King for One Night in Miami… and the category’s winner, Nomadland‘s Zhao.

That same year also marked historic nominations and wins, with Zhao becoming the first Asian woman to win in the directing category, while King became only the second Black woman to be nominated in the honor’s history, following Ava DuVernay’s 2014 nomination for Selma.

Beyond Kwan’s historic nomination for Asian filmmakers, the 2023 best director nominations are a return to form for the awarding body. In its 80-year history, the Globes have only nominated a handful of women, including Campion, Zhao, King, Fennell, DuVernay, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Barbra Streisand. Streisand, Zhao and Campion are the only women to have won.

The 2023 awards show is set to air live Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock, following one year off the air amid a scandal with the Globes’ parent organization, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The HFPA, which presents the Golden Globes, is owned by Eldridge Industries. The Hollywood Reporter is owned by PME Holdings, LLC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge.