Oscars 2021: Predicting Winners In EVERY Category

2. Best Director: Chloé Zhao

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Chadwick Boseman
Searchlight Pictures

Having already won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for Nomadland - with previous winners such as Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón going on to win Best Director - Chloé Zhao's nomination for Best Director is all but guaranteed with a win being extremely likely.

If Zhao wins for directing this Frances McDormand film she could become - shockingly - the second woman and first Asian woman to win Best Director at the Oscars. As somewhat of a beloved indie film director with Songs My Brothers Taught Me and The Rider, Nomadland marks Zhao's rise to the mainstream which will be followed by Marvel's The Eternals later this year.

Zhao's main competition comes from Minari's Lee Isaac Chung whose highly personal tale of growing up as a Korean immigrant in America (based loosely on his own life) may strike a chord with Academy voters. Other likely Best Director nominees include Spike Lee for Da 5 Bloods and Regina King for One Night in Miami which - if correct - could see a historical ratio of female and people of colour outnumbering what is usually a very white and extremely male category.

Contributor

An avid cinephile, love Trainspotting (the film, not the hobby), like watching bad films ironically (The Room, Cats) and hate my over-reliance on brackets (they’re handy for a quick aside though).