Inarritu's DGA Win Further Muddies Oscar Race

An unclear cinematic season got a little foggier on Saturday with Alejandro Inarritu's Directors Guild win for his harrowing frontier epic The Revenant. With only weeks to go before the Academy Awards on Feb. 28, the race is still wide open, reports the AP. Even the guilds are divided in their top awards. Spotlight, the drama detailing the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into sex abuses in the Catholic Church, won the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble, while the financial crisis dramedy The Big Short picked up the Producers Guild Award. The DGA win for The Revenant is not insignificant. Inarritu won last year for Birdman, which went on to win the best picture and best director Oscar. In fact, only seven times in the history of the DGAs has a director who won the guild's top award not gone on to win the Academy Award.

Inarritu was teary as he accepted the Directors Guild prize, which he characterized as "a hug from my peers." Both Spotlight director Tom McCarthy and The Big Short director Adam McKay were nominated and will be competing for the Oscar. Others included George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road and Ridley Scott for The Martian. Saturday's ceremony also offered a telling look at the representation of both women and directors of color. While more women were nominated this year than ever before—14 of the 47 nominees—only one took home an award. Dee Rees accepted the DGA prize in the television movie or miniseries category for Bessie. "There's a million reasons why I shouldn't be in this room, and there are a million more reasons why I shouldn't be on this stage," Rees said. (More Alejandro Inarritu stories.)