The time between the Oscar nominations and the date of the actual awards is one of the most exciting times in the world of film. Both on and offline, cinephiles are debating which film is most likely to take home the prize in each category. Some categories seem like foregone conclusions. Like, is there any reality where KPop Demon Hunters (2025) doesn’t win for Best Animated Film or Original Song? However, some categories are more up in the air with no clear winner. And no category this year will be quite as fierce as Best Director.
Not only is Best Director often an indicator of who could win Best Picture, but this year, almost every nominee has some kind of notable claim to win. The competition between Chloé Zhao, Joachim Trier, Josh Safdie, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ryan Coogler will be tough. Still, there are a handful of reasons why each nominee deserves to win outside of the overall quality of their films.
Granted, each of them doesn’t have an equal justification to win, but nevertheless, there’s a chance for this category to make history in 2026. If you’ve seen their films either in theaters or on HBO Max, then it should be clear why these directors deserve to win the Oscar, but what exactly would that mean for each of them to win?
Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)
Chloé Zhao is no stranger to the Oscars. Back in 2021, she won Best Director for Nomadland (2020), a quiet and contemplative film about a woman wandering the United States and finding community and companionship wherever she goes. It’s not hard to see how the film influenced Hamnet (2025), as both explore grief in very different ways. However, this time around, Zhao’s win for Best Director would be pretty sizable.
Did you know that only three women have ever actually won an Oscar for Best Director? Katheryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker (2008) in 2010, Zhao won in 2021, and just one year later, Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog (2021). No woman has ever won Best Director twice. So, Zhao’s win would have her join an illustrious group consisting of Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and many others. Honestly, she has a solid shot at winning, especially given how Hamnet did pretty well at the Golden Globes. She may not be the frontrunner, but a win for her would be monumental for women in the film industry.
Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
No nominee at this year’s Oscars has as big a chance to make history as Ryan Coogler. Not only is Sinners the most nominated film at the Oscars ever, but if Coogler wins for Best Director, it will be the first time a Black person has won for the category. Just stop and think about that for a second. In the Academy’s 98 years, a Black man has never won for Best Director. Sure, Black people have been nominated for Best Director previously. Still, it’s only happened six times: John Singleton for Boyz n the Hood (1991), Lee Daniels for Precious (2009), Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave (2013), Barry Jenkins for Moonlight (2016), Jordan Peele for Get Out (2017), and Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman (2019).
Of those six, none won. A win for Ryan Coogler and his bold passion project would be undeniably historic. It would help propel Sinners into legendary status as a film that completely and utterly dominated the Academy Awards and pushed forward Black representation in film the same way that Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) did back when it first released.
Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
If you want to talk about historic directors, look no further than Paul Thomas Anderson. Since he first burst onto the scene with Hard Eight (1997), PTA has been a darling of the film world. Still, he has also always been a bridesmaid and never a bride. While his films have won Oscars before, most notably for There Will Be Blood (2007), Paul Thomas Anderson has personally never won an Oscar, despite being nominated 14 times across seven films.
The academy usually goes out of its way to honor industry veterans, but the academy’s consistent snubbing of PTA is just bizarre. It would be especially odd for a film that’s as provocative as One Battle After Another to lose, since it’s an all too real movie that isn’t afraid to advocate for revolution in the face of tyranny in the same way that RRR (2022) did to help it earn its Oscar nominations and wins. This may finally be the year that PTA gets his due, and given how most people are pegging him as the frontrunner, this industry icon may finally receive the recognition that he deserves.
Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
Most of the directors who wind up winning Best Director tend to be from the United States. That may have shifted within the past decade, but only a minority of winners have come from Europe. Joachim Trier’s win for Sentimental Value may not be as monumental as Zhao or Coogler’s win, but Trier would be the first Scandinavian director ever to win Best Director if he took home the Oscar.
Other Danish and Norwegian directors have been nominated in the past decade, like Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game (2014) and Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round (2020), but there’s a shot that Trier could be the very first winner. The odds aren’t great, given that Sentimental Value’s two-hour and thirteen-minute examination of a multifaceted and dysfunctional family has select appeal, but a win for Scandinavia would be great. Only 13 Scandinavians have ever won an Oscar, and even then, most of them were for American productions. Trier’s win for a film that is unmistakably Norwegian would be a moment of national pride for Norway and help encourage more people to examine a pocket of the film industry that goes sorely unrepresented.
Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)
Josh Safdie is in a weird place as a director. It was only recently that he separated from his brother Benny, and both began their own careers as directors. Benny directed The Smashing Machine (2025) and got a single nomination for it, while Josh directed Marty Supreme and earned nine nominations.
A win for Josh Safdie wouldn’t be a monumental win in the same way the other nominees’ victories would be, but it would be a meaningful one for him. It is the first time he received a Best Director nomination, and a win for Safdie would put him in the same company as directors like Sam Mendes, who won Best Director on their first nomination. It’s a tough act to pull off, but given how Marty Supreme refines that unadulterated anxiety laced throughout Safdie’s previous film, Uncut Gems (2019), it certainly is possible. Plus, to take a break for six years only to come back and win an Oscar for directing would undoubtedly be a nice feather in his cap: maybe not a historical win, but a personally fulfilling one.
