Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film
The 2022 recipients: Daniel Scheinert (left) and Daniel Kwan (right)
Presented by	Directors Guild of America
Country	United States
First awarded	1948
Currently held by	Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

The Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures is a special prize given out each year by the Directors Guild of America (DGA). It celebrates the best work by a film director.

Imagine a director as the captain of a movie set. They are in charge of everything, from how the actors perform to how the camera moves. This award honors the director who does the best job leading their team to create an amazing movie.

One of the most famous directors, Steven Spielberg, has won this award 3 times. He has also been nominated 13 times, which is more than anyone else! He's even the first director to be nominated in six different decades. Another director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, won the award two years in a row, which is a rare achievement. Sometimes, two directors work together and share the award, like Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story and more recently, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

How the DGA Award Predicts the Oscars

This award is often a good hint for who will win the Academy Award for Best Director, also known as the Oscar. Usually, the director who wins the DGA Award also wins the Oscar.

However, there have been a few times when the DGA winner did not win the Oscar:

• 1968 – Anthony Harvey (for The Lion in Winter) lost to Carol Reed (for Oliver!).
• 1972 – Francis Ford Coppola (for The Godfather) lost to Bob Fosse (for Cabaret).
• 1985 – Steven Spielberg (for The Color Purple) lost to Sydney Pollack (for Out of Africa). Interestingly, Spielberg wasn't even nominated for an Oscar that year.
• 1995 – Ron Howard (for Apollo 13) lost to Mel Gibson (for Braveheart). Ron Howard also wasn't nominated for an Oscar.
• 2000 – Ang Lee (for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) lost to Steven Soderbergh (for Traffic).
• 2002 – Rob Marshall (for Chicago) lost to Roman Polanski (for The Pianist).
• 2012 – Ben Affleck (for Argo) lost to Ang Lee (for Life of Pi). Ben Affleck was not nominated for an Oscar.
• 2019 – Sam Mendes (for 1917) lost to Bong Joon-ho (for Parasite).

Recent Winners and Nominees

Here are the winners and nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures from 2010 onwards. The winner for each year is highlighted in yellow.

2010s Winners

2020s Winners

Directors with Multiple Wins

Some directors have won this award more than once!

3 wins

• Steven Spielberg

2 wins

• Francis Ford Coppola
• Alfonso Cuarón
• Clint Eastwood
• Miloš Forman
• Ron Howard
• Alejandro González Iñárritu (won two times in a row!)
• David Lean
• Ang Lee
• Joseph L. Mankiewicz
• Sam Mendes
• George Stevens
• Oliver Stone
• Robert Wise
• Fred Zinnemann

Directors with Multiple Nominations

These directors have been nominated for the award four or more times, showing their consistent talent:

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Premio del Sindicato de Directores a la mejor dirección para niños

• BAFTA Award for Best Direction
• Academy Award for Best Director
• Golden Globe Award for Best Director
• Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director