The Best Director race for the Oscars 2025 includes some notable directors who have yet to win in the category, as well as some previous winners hoping to pull an upset. The 2025 awards season has a very different group of contenders for Best Director compared to 2024. While Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan were the clear top two choices to win, this new year is a more wide-open competition. There are big-time directors in the mix thanks to massive sequels, but a crop of rising filmmakers in Hollywood are also looking to break through with the Academy.
Predicting the five Best Director nominees is not a task that exists in a vacuum, as nominations for all categories at the Oscars 2025 play a role in figuring out which movies are rising to the top. It’s often these heavyweight contenders that can bring the credited director into the Best Director race. That adds attention to 2025’s predicted Best Picture movies like Anora, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, and more. The overall nomination potential for those titles is a major factor in Screen Rant’s predicted Best Director nominations and winner for the Oscars 2025.
Director Movie 1 Ridley Scott Gladiator II 2 Jacques Audiard Emilia Pérez 3 Sean Baker Anora 4 Denis Villeneuve Dune: Part Two 5 Brady Corbet The Brutalist
6 The Next Directors In Line
Several Directors Are Still In Contention
With plenty of time remaining before Oscar nominations are announced on January 17, 2025, several directors could still work their way into a nomination. Pedro Almodóvar (The Room Next Door), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing), and Edward Berger (Conclave) are among those attached to potential Best Picture nominees. Robert Zemeckis (Here) and Steve McQueen (Blitz) have already won in the category before and could gain momentum as the season progresses.
There’s also the group of filmmakers who could break through with a nomination even if the Best Picture nom does not accompany the film. Jason Reitman (Saturday Night), Pablo Larraín (Maria), Luca Guadagnino (Queer or Challengers), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), and Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) are a few directors who remain in the discussion. These names will need some excellent campaigns to become stronger contenders for a nomination, though.
5 Brady Corbet – The Brutalist
Won The Silver Lion At Venice
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Brady Corbet could receive his first Oscar nomination in 2025 thanks to his work on The Brutalist. Overseeing a historical epic with a runtime well over three hours is no easy task, but reviews for The Brutalist show that Corbet navigated the story well and executed it in a way where it is not overbearing for audiences. It’s a very different movie than Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon, but both movies are recent examples of the Academy applauding the work of a director on a sprawling epic, so perhaps Corbet can follow in Nolan and Scorsese’s footsteps.
In terms of his resume for winning, Brady Corbet already has a potential leg up on his competition thanks to the Venice Film Festival. The Brutalist’s release at the festival led to a nomination for the Golden Lion, but Corbet won the Silver Lion – Venice’s version of Best Director. He beat out hopeful contenders like Luca Guadagnino (Queer), Pedro Almodóvar (The Room Next Door), Pablo Larraín (Maria), Todd Phillips (Joke: Folie à Deux), Halina Reijn (Babygirl), Justin Kurzel (The Order), and Walter Salles (I’m Still Here). That puts him ahead of many peers already.
It is worth noting that the Silver Lion is not always a direct sign that a director will get a Best Director nomination, let alone win it all. Since 2010, only one director has won the Silver Lion and then got a Best Director nomination: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog. Campion did notably win the category in 2022, but the Academy rarely lines up with Venice’s choice for Best Director.
4 Denis Villeneuve – Dune: Part Two
He Was Snubbed For The First Film
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Denis Villeneuve is still among the favorites for a Best Director nomination in 2025 after Dune: Part Two. The director has no shortage of supporters in Hollywood, but he was still surprisingly snubbed from the category in 2022 for the first movie. Dune 2 showed Villeneuve become an even greater master of his craft, delivering a sci-fi epic for the ages. The Academy voters now have a chance to rectify his prior snub and recognize the great work he did on the sequel.
Related Is Dune 2 An All-Time Sci-Fi Masterpiece? 10 Biggest Takeaways From Glowing Reviews Dune: Part Two has been unanimously celebrated by critics, setting it up to become a theatrical phenomenon and even a modern sci-fi masterpiece.
This would be Denis Villeneuve’s second Best Director nomination if it happens. He was nominated in 2017 for Arrival but lost to Damien Chazelle for La La Land. Getting the nomination would be a great sign for Dune 2’s Oscar chances overall, but whether it can actually get Villeneuve a win in the category is a different question. If the movie came out later in the year and Villeneuve’s technical mastery was fresh in voters’ minds, it could have a better shot.
The plans for Dune 3 could also hurt Villeneuve’s chances of winning. Dune 2 was previously getting comparisons to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and how the Academy showered Peter Jackson’s movie with nominations and wins as a means to celebrate the entire trilogy. Since Dune 2 is now confirmed not to be the end of Villeneuve’s time on Arrakis, the Academy could wait until the trilogy is over to give him similar recognition for one of Hollywood’s best modern franchises.
3 Sean Baker – Anora
He Directed A Best Picture Frontrunner
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Anora is thought to be a frontrunner for the Best Picture win at the Oscars 2025, so it should not come as a surprise that director Sean Baker is seriously in contention for Best Director. He’s been on the cusp of awards contention for a few years now, thanks to movies like Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket. But after those movies only got one Oscar nomination between them, Anora appears to be the movie that the Academy will take more seriously, which should include a Sean Baker nomination in Best Director.
The case for Sean Baker’s nomination and possible win currently rests largely on Anora’s standing in Oscar circles and a rather important win at Cannes. Anora won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. This is notable for Baker because the directors of three out of the last four Palme d’Or winning movies went on to get Oscar nominations: Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness), and Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall). Of those three, Bong Joon-ho was the only one to win Best Director at the Oscars.
The biggest reason why he could win is if Anora is the ultimate Best Picture winner. The Oscar winners for Best Director and Best Picture have matched movies three out of the last five years, including the last two years with Everything Everywhere All At Once and Oppenheimer. The Academy can often split the categories to give love to two different deserving titles, but Sean Baker could win for Anora if the recent trend continues.
2 Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez
Emilia Pérez
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If Anora is the Best Picture favorite and the Academy decides to split Picture and Director with two different films, then Jacques Audiard’s work in Emilia Pérez could be the one to benefit. Following its debut at Cannes and getting acquired by Netflix, the movie has picked up steam through Telluride and Toronto showings. A lot of attention has gone towards the work of the three leading women, but Audiard’s direction has not gone unnoticed, putting him squarely in the mix for Best Director at the Oscars 2025.
Audiard currently does not have a lot of precursors that help point toward him edging out the competition for a win, nor does he have a strong history with the Academy. His film The Prophet was nominated for Best International Feature Film in 2010, but his directing was not directly recognized. That makes his selection here more of a showing of faith in Emilia Pérez as a legitimate Oscars contender across the board.
With Emilia Pérez arguably best positioned to win Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña, Jacques Audiard could be a chance to further recognize the film. It could also help that Netflix is backing the movie now. The streaming service has helped Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, Adam McKay, and David Fincher get Best Director nominations in recent years. As Netflix’s biggest awards contender in 2025, the push for Emilia Pérez should be expansive and keep Audiard very much in the race.
1 Ridley Scott – Gladiator II
Ridley Scott Could Finally Win Best Director
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Ridley Scott is our predicted winner for Best Director at the 2025 Oscars thanks to Gladiator II. The historical epic returns the director to a world where he has already found success with the Academy. The original Gladiator won five out of 12 nominations, but Scott’s nomination for Best Director was one of the categories where the movie fell short. Now that he’s back in ancient Rome, it should be time for the Academy to give him his fourth Best Director Oscar nomination overall.
Ridley Scott was nominated for Best Director for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down
The lack of a Best Director Oscar win is a glaring omission from Ridley Scott’s career. That gap is one the Academy could now look to fill thanks to Gladiator II, assuming it lives up to the hype. Scott has called it one of his best movies, so an Oscar nomination for his direction would make sense if voters agree with his assessment. Even if they do not, there could be the urge to give Ridley Scott a Best Director win as a legacy award that symbolically represents all the great work he’s done throughout his career.
Picking Ridley Scott to win Best Director for Gladiator II is a risk since no one has seen the movie to validate the belief that his direction is worthy of this recognition. That means his standing in the Oscars 2025 Best Director race could wildly shift upon the movie’s release and as reactions and reviews emerge. Since Scott’s recent movies have not had any real signs of him slipping, confidence that Gladiator II could be worthy of this nomination is still high.