Solidifying 1917 as the film to beat at the Academy Awards, director Sam Mendes has won the top prize at the 72nd annual Directors Guild of America Awards.
"I was fortunate enough to win this award two decades ago," Mendes said in his acceptance speech on Saturday night, referencing his DGA Awards win for 1999's American Beauty.
"And I think if I'm honest with myself, I didn't feel ultimately like I really knew what I was doing. I feel a little bit more like I do now."
The DGAs are one of the most reliable bellwethers for the Academy Awards - all but seven directors who won the feature film award at the DGAs went on to win the corresponding Oscar, including last year's winner Alfonso Cuaron for Roma.
The last time the two awards diverged, it was when Ben Affleck won the DGAs for Argo but wasn't nominated for the Oscar.
DGA president Thomas Schlamme opened the evening at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles praising the efforts of the DGA to diversify the ranks of directors beyond white men: According to Schlamme, 50 per cent of all directors working in TV in 2019 were women or people of colour, up from 21 per cent in 2014.
Honey Boy director Alma Har'el won the first-time feature award. After thanking star and screenwriter Shia LaBeouf for affording her the opportunity to make a film about the children of alcoholics (as she said she also is), Har'el gave a shout out to Jessica Dimmock, who is spearheading the effort to change the guild's policy for new and expectant parents.
"We're counting on the DGA to fight for parents so they can birth the new generation of audiences and filmmakers," she said.
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert won the documentary award for their film American Factory, over The Cave, Maiden, Honeyland, and One Child Nation.
HBO's Watchmen won its first major award when Nicole Kassell took home the medallion for dramatic series, over fellow Watchmen director Stephen Williams, Game of Thrones directors David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik, and Succession director Mark Mylod.
Bill Hader took home the comedy series award for Barry, winning over three directors for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Dan Attias, Daniel Palladino, and Amy Sherman-Palladino) and David Mandel for the series finale of Veep.
Johan Renck continued the near unbroken awards season run for HBO's Chernobyl, winning the prize for TV movie and limited series, over three directors for Fosse/Verdon (Thomas Kail, Minkie Spiro, and Jessica Yu), Vince Gilligan for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and Ava DuVernay for When They See Us.
Saturday Night Live director Don Roy King won his fifth consecutive DGA award for variety/talk/news/sports series.
James Burrows and Andy Fisher won the variety/talk/news/sports specials award for ABC's Live in Front of a Studio Audience special featuring episodes of All in the Family and The Jeffersons.
In his speech, Burrows thanked All in the Family and The Jeffersons creator, the 97-year-old Norman Lear.
"At my age, it's nice to work with someone older than you," Burrows joked.
Jason Cohen gave Disney Plus its first DGA award for the Annie episode of the reality program Encore! The winner for children's programming was Amy Schatz for the HBO documentary Song of Parkland.
Assistant director Duncan S. Henderson (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) accepted the Frank Capra Achievement Award, and stage manager Arthur E. Lewis (The Oscars) took home the Franklin Schaffner award.
Australian Associated Press
