Women Make Up One-Third of the Best Director Nominees at the 2025 Golden Globes

Many years when award season rolls around, we find ourselves eye-rolling at how few women received recognition for their work as filmmakers. Thankfully, the 2025 Golden Globe nominations featured pleasant surprises in that category.

During the 2025 Golden Globe nominations, announced on Monday, December 9, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat and Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia garnered noms for their work on The Substance and All We Imagine as Light, respectively, meaning that women were one-third of the nominations in the Best Director category.

They're nominated alongside Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez, Sean Baker for Anora, Edward Berger for Conclave, and Brady Corbet for The Brutalist. (Best Director is one of the few categories at the Golden Globes that does not differentiate by Musical/Comedy or Drama.)

Fargeat and Kapadia's nominations were unexpected. Their spots were predicted to go to two Hollywood titans behind major blockbusters: Jon Chu for Wicked and Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Two.

The Substance premiered at Cannes in May, instantly generating buzz, and winning Best Screenplay. However, it was a bit of a wild card pick for the Globes; the film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley is a feminist horror film tackling beauty standards, and awards voters typically overlook the horror genre.

All We Imagine as Light, meanwhile, continues the Globes' trend of recognizing international films across categories. Kapadia's drama, which follows three nurses and friends in Mumbai, also premiered at Cannes and won the prestigious Grand Prix award, becoming the first Indian movie to do so.

Both The Substance and All We Imagine as Light received additional nominations. The Substance will also compete for Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy, and Fargeat picked up a nod for Best Screenplay. The film's stars, Moore and Qualley, are nominated for Best Performance by a Female Actor and Best Supporting Performance by a Female Actor in the Musical/Comedy category, respectively.

All We Imagine as Light, a production hailing from India and France, is also up for Best Motion Picture - Non-English Language.

Fargeat and Kapadia's recognition follows last year's Globes which also saw two women nominated for Best Director: Greta Gerwig for Barbie and Celine Song for Past Lives. 2023, however, felt like a step back with its male-dominated nominees. (2022 awarded Best Director to Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog. Campion was nominated along with Maggie Gyllenhaal; 2021 was another major year with three women nominated (including Regina King, Emerald Fennell, and Chloé Zhao, who took home the trophy).

The 2025 Golden Globes will be held on Sunday, January 5, with Nikki Glaser hosting. The awards ceremony will air live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in L.A. at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS.