Paul Thomas Anderson Wins DGA Award for Best Director

Looks like third time’s a charm for director Paul Thomas Anderson. The One Battle After Another director has finally won the Best Director Award at the Directors Guild Of America Awards this year, after being nominated for the same twice before, for There Will Be Blood(2007) and Licorice Pizza (2021).

Anderson was presented with the award at the award ceremony held on February 7th in Beverly Hills, California.

One Battle After Another has also won the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Award this year, with critics foreseeing an Oscar for it this year.

Fellow contestants for this award included Guillermo Del Toro, Chloe Zhao, Ryan Coogler and Josh Safdie. However, apart from Del Toro, all others were also nominated for Oscars in the Best Director category.

In the last twenty years, the majority of DGA winners have won the Oscar. So much so that DGA Awards are seen as an indicator for Oscar winning possibilities.

DGA is the only organization which presents an award to the director as well as the rest of the team including assistant directors, production managers and more. In his speech while accepting the award, Anderson had paid tribute to the late assistant director Adam Somner, who had passed away in 2024.

Commenting on the large number of directors, assistant directors and production managers gathered at the event, comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who hosted the event for the first time, joked that “it’s like if a movie was just the credits.”

Only eight times in the past 77 years has the DGA winner lost the Oscar. But even in such cases, the movies went on to win the Best Picture category. So, we can firmly say that Anderson’s film One Battle After Another is expected to win in either of the two categories.

This article is written by Yoga Adithya, a student of Loyola Academy, Secunderabad, interning with Deccan Chronicle.