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Alfonso Cuaron has won the Directors Guild Award for top feature film for Roma, keeping up his awards-season momentum.
Cuaron topped Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born, Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman, Adam McKay for Vice, and Peter Farrelly for Green Book.
“Thank you, cabron — you are my film career,” a deeply moved Cuaron told last year’s winner, Guillermo del Toro.
Cuaron explained backstage that he had used “cabron,” often an expletive in Spanish, as a term of endearment for del Toro. “Like everything else, it’s a matter of context,” he added.
Cuaron also thanked Participant Media, which financed the black-and-white Spanish-language film, and Netflix, which released it, for their “glorious stupidity.”
The filmmaker singled out Oscar-nominated stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira.
“‘Roma’ simply doesn’t exist without the generosity of spirt and effortless grace of Yalitza and Marina,” he said. “They somehow, with the rest of my beautiful cast, managed to bring to life this film from my memory.”
Roma, which is set in Mexico City in the 1970s, is based on Cuaron’s boyhood.
It’s the second time that the DGA has honored foreign-language film, 18 years after Ang Lee won for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And it’s the second DGA Award that Cuaron has won, five years after taking the trophy and the directing Academy Award for Gravity.
Cuaron won the Golden Globe for directing Roma against the same four men — Cooper, Farrelly, Lee, and McKay. Cuaron also won the director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.
The DGA Award is one of the top indicators of Oscar glory, with all but seven of the DGA winners since 1948 going on to take the best director Oscar — including del Toro last year for The Shape of Water. The last divergence came in 2013 when Ben Affleck won the DGA Award for Argo, even though he did not receive an Oscar nom.
About 80% of DGA nominees have gone on to be in the running for an Academy Award in recent years. Cuaron, Lee, and McKay have been nominated for an Oscar this year, along with Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favourite and Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War.
Mexico-born directors have won four of the last five directing Oscars, starting with Cuaron in 2014, followed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Birdman and The Revenant, and del Toro for The Shape of Water last year. Damien Chazelle won the DGA Award and Oscar in 2017 for La La Land.
Cuaron’s script for Roma is up for a Writers Guild of America award, which will be announced on Feb. 17. Roma scored 10 Oscar nominations, tied with The Favourite. The Academy Awards will take place Feb. 24.
McKay was still a big winner, taking home the drama series award for HBO’s Succession. Ben Stiller nabbed the movies for television and limited series prize for Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora.
“This is a dream come true,” Stiller said. “I’ve wanted to be a director since I was 8 years old.”
Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers won the documentary award over Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, RBG, Free Solo, and Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
Three Identical Strangers did not receive an Oscar nomination. Wardle gave a shoutout to Lee for Do the Right Thing, saying that it had changed his life.
In an upset, Bo Burnham received the first-time directing award for Eighth Grade, topping Cooper, who had been widely expected to win, Carlos Lopez Estrada for Blindspotting, Matthew Heineman for A Private War, and Boots Riley for Sorry to Bother You. The comedy-drama starred Elsie Fisher as an insecure eighth-grader in the final week of school.
“I didn’t think this was mathematically possible,” a stunned Burnham said in his speech.
Bill Hader won the comedy series award for the first episode of HBO’s Barry. It topped two episodes of Atlanta and two from last year’s winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Hader won the Emmy for actor in a comedy series in September.
“I first came to this ceremony is 2001 when I was a PA on ‘James Dean: An Invented Life’ so be nice to your PAs,” Hader said in his acceptance speech.
Cuaron, in accepting his nomination medallion earlier in the night, took a shot at the Trump administration in noting that many of the world’s 70 million domestic workers are immigrants. “When we vilify them, calling them rapists, we diminish ourselves,” he said.
Cooper gave a passionate reaction to receiving his medallion, saying, “It’s the humanity of making films. I love it so much. I’m never going to stop.”
DGA president Thomas Schlamme opened the ceremony by sending well wishes for a speedy recovery to DGA member Jussie Smollett, who was attacked earlier this week in Chicago in what local law enforcement is investigating as a hate crime. He also promised that the DGA, which has 17,000 members, will push for more inclusion of women and minorities.
“Unions are under near-constant threat,” he said. “Our industry is one of the last strongholds of labor. It’s something that we must never take for granted
Aisha Tyler hosted the event at Hollywood & Highland Center, noting, “Last year’s host Judd Apatow has been recast as a six-foot-tall black woman.”
She evoked major laughter on her opening set by saying she was nostalgic for the presidency of George W. Bush: “He was a cute dumb, not a ‘We’re all gonna die’ dumb.’”
The first award went to Jack Jameson for children’s programs for Sesame Street’s When You Wish Upon a Pickle: A Sesame Street Special. The variety/talk/news/sports winner was Don Roy King for Saturday Night Live: Adam Driver; Kanye West and the variety/talk/news/sports specials victor was Louis J. Horvitz for the 60th Grammy Awards. King has now won the category for Saturday Night Live for four consecutive years.
The reality programs prize went to Russell Norman for the Japan segment of Netflix’s The Final Table. Spike Jonze of MJZ won the commercials award for Welcome Home, Apple Homepod.
FX Networks’ John Landgraf received the DGA diversity award and cited a 2015 Variety article spelling out diversity problems at the cabler as a spur to actively seek changes.
Associate Director Mimi Deaton received the Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award and Unit Production Manger Kathleen McGill was awarded the Frank Capra Achievement Award and fell down while walking up to the podium, evoking a standing ovation. “I’m not nervous anymore, that’s for sure,” she said when she began speaking.
Quincy Jones presented Don Mischer, best known for handling live events such as the Olympics and presidential inaugurations, with the previously announced lifetime achievement award in television. He’s won 10 DGA Awards.
“When I was 12, I built my own TV studio in my garage,” Mischer said. “It’s hard for me to put into words how it feels to be included with all of you.”
