One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson won the top prize at the DGA Awards – Outstanding Directing Achievement in a Theatrical Feature Film – marking the most important Oscar prediction.
“It’s an honor, President Nolan,” he told DGA president Christopher Nolan, to loud laughter from the audience Saturday at the Beverly Hilton.
This was Anderson’s third DGA nomination. Recently, he was nominated Licorice Pizza in 2021 and, before that, because There Will Be Blood in 2007.
Since the first DGA Awards in 1948, the Theatrical Feature Award winner has predicted the Best Director Oscar winner all but eight circumstances. This makes the DGA Awards the biggest bellwether for the Oscars. Adding to that, the wins for the DGA Theatrical Feature and Best Director Oscars have been the same for each of the last five years.
Anderson refers to Spielberg’s Close the Third Kind of Encountersaying, “It’s like we’re all here for a reason, some cosmic thing brought us to this room, and that was the call to the mountain. It’s that feeling that we all love to do sh*t and we need to do it. We need to do it or it’s an addiction, I’m not really sure.”
Paul Thomas Anderson and crew accepted Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Theatrical Feature Film for ‘One Battle After Another’ on Saturday at the DGA Awards.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for DGA
On a sad note, Anderson paid tribute to his close friend, producer and longtime original AD Adam Somner, who died in 2024 of thyroid cancer.
“Obviously we’re up here, minus one,” Anderson said. “Many people in this room know our hero, our man, Adam Somner [Spielberg] you know him. His wife Carmen [Ruiz de Huidobro] here.”
Anderson continued, “He took the job seriously, and he didn’t take himself too seriously. And that was a great gift… He made us feel safe. Think about this job that we do, how dangerous it can be, really dangerous. And to get through the movie and nobody gets hurt, safe, it’s an amazing experience because of the great AD, and he was the best.”
Anderson took a deep breath and continued, “I wish everyone in this room the love I had with him, may you be blessed with the relationship I had with him, and if you already have them, hold them close, remind them that you love them. He would love this. He would be very happy.”
Adam Somner
Getty Images
Last year, it won a major DGA award AnoraSean Baker, who went on to win the Oscar for Directing and the film took Best Picture. Two years ago, Christopher Nolan won at the DGAs before taking home the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars. Oppenheimer.
Also nominated in this DGA category tonight is Ryan Coogler They are sinnersChloe Zhao for HamnetGuillermo del Toro for Frankenstein and Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme.
Coogler is only the fifth Black director ever to be recognized in this category at the DGA Awards. The last one was Spike Lee BlackKkKlansman in 2018. But no Black filmmaker has ever won this top DGA award.
Zhao won this top DGA award in 2021 Nomadland (which also won Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars) and now, with this Hamnet nomination, she joins Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion and Greta Gerwig as the only women to receive multiple DGA nominations.
In 2018, Del Toro won the DGA’s top film award The Status of Waterwhile this was Safdie’s first DGA appointment.
