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The Academy Awards just announced the nominations for their upcoming 97th Oscars ceremony, which will air live from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 2 at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu, and among the shoo-ins and snubs was a rare nominee for the academy’s history: Coralie Fargeat became only the ninth woman nominated for Best Director.
After the Academy Awards’ first ceremony in 1929, it took until 1976 for Lina Wertmüller to be the first woman nominated in the category. Since then,
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At the 49th annual Academy Awards, Italian filmmaker Wertmüller was the very first woman nominated for Best Director, for her World War II movie Seven Beauties. In a 2018 interview with Variety, Wertmüller — who died in 2021 — reflected on the significance of her nomination, saying, “to this day I get thank-you letters from directors who say they have been inspired by my experience.”
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It would be 17 years until another woman was nominated; the honor went to Campion for her classic The Piano. Though she didn’t take home Best Director that year, she did win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and stars Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin (bottom left, then just 11 years old) took home the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards, respectively.
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Ten years later, Coppola joined the exclusive club when she was nominated for the Bill Murray/Scarlett Johansson favorite, Lost in Translation. Like Campion before her, Coppola — daughter of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola — lost out on Best Director but did win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
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It was at the 82nd annual Academy Awards when a woman finally won the Best Director Oscar: Bigelow, for her war drama The Hurt Locker. “It’s the moment of a lifetime,” Bigelow said in her acceptance speech.
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Despite Bigelow’s big moment, it was eight years until another woman was nominated for Best Director, this time Gerwig for the cult hit Lady Bird. Though the film had five Oscar nominations — and critical acclaim — it was shut out at the ceremony. “I think that the directors branch [of the Academy] could probably stand to bolster its lady numbers,” Gerwig told Variety of the voting pool in 2020.
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The second woman to win Best Director — and first woman of Asian descent to do so — was Nomadland‘s Zhao in 2021. In an interview with PEOPLE, Zhao said she hoped her win “helps more people like me get to live their dreams.”
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Not only was 2021 special because of Zhao’s win, but it also marked the first time two of the five Best Director nominees were female: Promising Young Woman director Fennell was up for the honor, too, and took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
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Ahead of the 2022 ceremony, Campion had already made history as the first woman nominated twice for the directing award. She won for Power of the Dog, the final win in a streak that included directing honors for the film at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards and Directors Guild Awards, in addition to the Silver Lion for best direction at the Venice Film Festival.
Campion’s Oscars honor also marked a two-year winning streak for female directors.
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French writer and director Justine Triet was nominated for Anatomy of a Fall, which she also co-wrote; she did not nab the director win that year (that went to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer) but she still took home a trophy for Best Original Screenplay.
Of her nomination, Triet said, “I was surprised because there are no more women beside me. So of course, I’m so, so lucky and very proud of all these things … It was not a dream because I could not imagine.”
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Coralie Fargeat, also from France, was the sole woman nominated in the 2024 slate for her buzzy film The Substance.
“This is such amazing news, I was screaming out of joy,” she told Good Morning America. She added of being only the ninth female nominated for the award, “It says a lot about the road we still have to go, and personally I’m extremely proud to be part of these heads and lead. I wanted to be a film maker and director since I was 15. That’s who I am, that’s where I feel free and good and powerful.”
