Jane Campion made Oscar history this morning as the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice, after The Power of the Dog. She was previously nominated in the category for The Piano in 1994, but won in the original screenplay category.
Campion is the eighth woman to break through in Oscar’s Best Director category. She is also the first woman to be nominated twice in the screenplay categories, this year in Adapted for Power of the Dog, and prior for The Piano. Campion overall counts three Oscar noms this year; Power of the Dog also being up for Best Picture.
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Last year was huge for women breaking the glass ceiling at the Oscars as Nomadland filmmaker Chloé Zhao and Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell became the first two female directors to be recognized in the category in a single year. They each became the sixth and seventh women to be nominated in the category following Lina Wertmüller (1975’s Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (1993’s The Piano), Sofia Coppola (2003’s Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (the category’s only winner with 2008’s The Hurt Locker) and Greta Gerwig (2017’s Lady Bird).
Zhao was the first woman to receive four nominations in a single year for Directing, Editing (the first female Asian to be recognized in the category), Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay. She repped the first woman of color to win, and also be nominated in the Best Director category at the Oscars.
Last year, Fennell became the third woman to be recognized with three noms in a single year following Coppola and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King‘s Fran Walsh who actually won all three of her trophies: Best Picture, Original Song and Adapted Screenplay. Fennell was also the first woman to be nominated for their feature film directorial debut. She would go on to win Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman.
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