Golden Globes nominate 3 female directors in 1 year for the 1st time

The Golden Globes generated outrage last year after again shutting out female directors. But voters didn't repeat history this time around.

The 2021 Golden Globe nominations were announced on Wednesday, and the show made history by for the first time ever nominating three women for Best Director in the same year, The Wrap reports.

Nomadland's Chloé Zhao, Promising Young Woman's Emerald Fennell, and One Night in Miami's Regina King were all nominated in the category, alongside Mank's David Fincher and The Trial of the Chicago 7's Aaron Sorkin. Zhao also became the first Asian woman to ever earn a nomination in this category, Variety reports.

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Before this year, only five women had ever been nominated for Best Director in Golden Globes history, according to the Los Angeles Times. The previous female director nominees were Barbra Streisand for Yentl and The Prince of Tides, Jane Campion for The Piano, Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, Ava DuVernay for Selma, and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Of those women, only Streisand has won.

For the 2020 show, the Golden Globes sparked controversy after once again nominating no female directors, even though multiple critically-acclaimed films directed by women were in contention including A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Little Women. Complaints about the lack of female director nominees have gone back years at the Globes, though. Famously, Natalie Portman when introducing the category in 2018 declared, "And here are the all-male nominees."