Jane Campion now first woman with two Best Director Oscar nominations
Feb 08, 2022
Washington [US], February 8 : Following the 2022 Academy Awards nominations, Jane Campion has entered the Oscars history books as the first woman filmmaker to boast of two career nominations in the Best Director category.
Campion has been nominated for directing her acclaimed work on the Netflix-backed 'The Power of the Dog', which also won her the directing prize at last year's Venice Film Festival and a nomination at the Directors Guild of America Awards.
According to Variety, her first Oscar nomination for directing came in 1994 when she was nominated for 'The Piano' at the 66th Academy Awards. She won the Oscar for an original screenplay that year.
Apart from directing, 'The Power of the Dog' picked up several Oscar nominations this year in categories such as best picture, actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, supporting actress for Kristen Dunst, supporting actor for Kodi Smitt-McPhee and Jesse Plemons, adapted screenplay, editing, score and cinematography.
Ari Wegner, the film's director of photography, is now just the second woman nominated at the Oscars in the cinematography category.
Campion is nominated in the 2022 Oscars directing category opposite Steven Spielberg for 'West Side Story', Kenneth Branagh for 'Belfast', Paul Thomas Anderson for 'Licorice Pizza' and Ryusuke Hamaguchi for 'Drive My Car'.
To date, only seven women have been Oscar-nominated for best director: Lina Wertmuller for 'Seven Beauties,' Campion for 'The Piano' and 'The Power of the Dog,' Sofia Coppola for 'Lost in Translation,' Kathryn Bigelow for 'The Hurt Locker,' Greta Gerwig for 'Lady Bird,' Chloe Zhao for 'Nomadland' and Emerald Fennell for 'Promising Young Woman.'
Out of the lot, only Bigelow and Zhao are the only two winners. The year both Zhao and Fennell earned nominations marked the first time in Oscars history that two female filmmakers competed for best director, as per Variety.
'The Power of the Dog' is Campion's adaptation of the 1967 Thomas Savage novel of the same name. In the film, Cumberbatch plays a sadistic rancher who meddles with his brother's new wife (Dunst) and her sensitive son (McPhee).
