Written by Devon Mitchell
In the 90-year history of the Academy Awards only five women have been nominated for best director and only one has won. Katheryn Bigelow won in 2009 for Hurt Locker — this was a whole 11 years ago.
Since then, there have been numerous movies directed by talented women. Just in 2020, three female directors have been snubbed of a nomination. Greta Gerwig for Little Women (2019), Lulu Wang for the Farewell, and Marielle Heller for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I have seen almost all the movies which have been nominated for best director and I have to say, these female directors should have been included over some of their male colleagues, especially Greta Gerwig.
After seeing Little Women (2019) three times, I can safely say it is now one of my favorite films of all time. A huge part of my love for this movie is due to the way Greta Gerwig directs her actors and pays attention to the most minute of details. I would even go as far as to say because of this Gerwig deserves a spot on the nomination list over big names like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Terantino.
Although he has an interesting directing style, Terantino films all have the same basic attributes, which pinpoint them as Terantino films. Greta Gerwig, on the other hand, directed three films in the past three years, all of which have been done in different styles and have unique attributes, which display Gerwig’s diverse directing style. All in all, I would say Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019) is a piece of cinematic literature that’s been neglected its rightful position in the Best Director category.
Still, the issue at hand is not that Greta Gerwig did not get a nomination. It’s that women are not properly celebrated in the film industry. Each year we see so many women who’ve given their films, which fill us with incomparable emotions, to us.
Every year we see women who deserve just as much recognition as the men in the field. Women are making major cracks in the glass ceilings of politics, engineering and business, but film’s remains disturbingly untouched.
