Golden Globes Nominations: No Women Directors Make The Cut

On Thursday morning, the 2019 Golden Globes nominations were announced. Once again, the Golden Globes have failed to nominate any single female director and have come with up an all-male list.

If we look back, wasn't it the year when Karyn Kusama's Destroyer blew our minds away? It's also the year Lynne Ramsay's masterpiece psychological thriller You Were Never Really Here caught global attention. Likewise, Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which earned Richard E. Grant a Best Supporting Actor nomination, Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life”), Josie Rourke's Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth Chomko (“What They Had”), and Debra Granik (“Leave No Trace”), Chloé Zhao’s The Rider (recently won Best Feature at this year’s Gotham Awards) -- they all were eligible for nomination. Then why were they left out of the nominations?

This is for the fourth year in a row that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has failed to nominate any woman for Best Director

READ: New York Times’ TV Ad For Golden Globe Evokes Strong Reactions

Today marked nearly a year after Natalie Portman called out the Golden Globes for not having any female nominees in the Best Director category. Yet, nothing seems to have changed.

"And here are the all-male nominees."

While presenting at #GoldenGlobes, Natalie Portman calls out lack of female nominees in best director category. https://t.co/YfC1aVIXyA pic.twitter.com/eoqk0Il03v

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 8, 2018

The list of the Globes’ directing nominees are — Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born, Alfonso Cuarón for Roma, Peter Farrelly for Green Book, Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman, and Adam McKay for Vice. But the big question is: where are all the women?

In 2018, when Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and Patti Jenkins (Wonder Woman) were not included in the nominations, it triggered the much needed voice against discrimination in the industry. Since then, Hollywood has declared “Time’s Up” and #MeToo  campaigns, for calling out the gender imbalance and exclusion of females in the workforce. But it is yet to bring about any concrete change.

The history of the Golden Globes and how women had been excluded:

• It wasn't until 1983 when a woman was first nominated. Barbra Streisand won for Yentl.
• Till date, she remained the only woman to have actually won the award
• Later, again in 1991, Streisand was nominated for The Prince of Tides.
• The only other women to have been nominated for Best Director are Jane Campion (1993’s The Piano), Sofia Coppola (2003’s Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (2008’s The Hurt Locker and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty), and Ava DuVernay (2014’s Selma).
• This year, Jenkins’ Private Life, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really were snubbed but all three were nominated for the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards, being the only awards show to nominate more women than men.

The 76th Golden Globe Awards will take place on Sunday, January 6, at The Beverly Hilton.

Read More Stories By Ria Das