Concluding my rundown of personal 2024 Oscar nominations, today I’ll look at the Best Director category.

I’ve heard a lot of people say last year was a bad one for new movies, but I’m not sure I agree. While 2024 may have lacked the depth of some years, I saw a lot of films with ample style and substance, and I’m excited that three of my director nominees were brand new to me.

And the nominees are…

Sean Baker – Anora
Baker has become one of my favorite filmmakers. His The Florida Project is one of my favorite movies of the century so far, and Tangerine and Red Rocket are both exceptional. With Anora, he mines similar territory (sex work, the failures of capitalism) but paints on a broader canvas, giving his guerrilla filmmaking style the polish of a high-budget romcom without losing its authenticity or grit.

Bertrand Bonello – The Beast
The Beast is French director Bonello’s 20th film, and somehow he has escaped my radar all those years. Here, he brings vivid life to each of the film’s three segments, bleeding them together around the edges but giving each a distinct genre touch: period romance, suspense thriller, heady sci-fi. He evokes David Fincher and Stanley Kubrick, but through a softer, more humanistic lens.

Alex Garland – Civil War
With Ex Machina and Annihilation, Garland proved a master of disturbing sci-fi. In Civil War, he brings the same exacting touch to the real world — or at least an alternate version of the real world that feels all too possible. He makes strategic use of everything in the directors’ toolkit — shot composition, slo-mo, music cues, subjective sound design — to put us in the heads of his protagonists.

Pascal Plante – Red Rooms
Canadian filmmaker Plante shows incredible restraint in telling the tale of a woman obsessed with a man on trial for the murder of three teenage girls. The film’s opening sequence is a 20-minute unbroken take of the trial’s opening arguments, the camera gliding through the courtroom before finally settling on the main character. Right out of the gate, you know you’re in good hands. Plante brings that same care and focus to the rest of the film.

Jane Schoenbrun – I Saw the TV Glow
No movie this year bears the stamp of its director more vividly than this one. Schoenbrun uses color and sound to immerse you in the headspace of her tormented characters, imbuing the most mundane suburban settings with existential dread. Every scene, every shot, advances the story narratively, visually, and thematically. This is brilliant work.

And the winner is… Jane Schoenbrun. With only their second fiction film, Schoenbrun already feels like a master.