The 2026 DGA Awards Were a Site for Inauguration and Commemoration

The 2026 DGA Awards were a mix of inauguration, commemoration, and audition, with the night’s big winner, “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson, checking off all three.

In hindsight, one of the driving forces behind Anderson’s recognition with this particular voting body is that the Directors Guild of America Awards honor more than just the director. When films or TV shows are nominated, not only do they receive the coveted DGA medallion, but their unit production managers, assistant directors, and even location managers do as well. Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” was dedicated to his longtime first AD, the late Adam Somner (who also was an executive producer on the film) and aligned with the ethos behind the ceremony itself to honor the directing unit as a whole.

When Anderson finally won his first DGA Award (he had been nominated twice before for “Licorice Pizza” and “There Will Be Blood”), the audience gave such strong applause to Anderson’s first invocation of Somner that the director had to pause his speech. Somner, who died of cancer toward the end of 2024, had not only collaborated with Anderson, but multiple Best Director Oscar winners — including Martin Scorsese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Steven Spielberg, who was in the room.

Remembering Somner, Anderson said, “He took this work so seriously and he did not take himself seriously at all. And that was his great gift.” He added that Somner “made us feel safe. You think about this work that we do, how dangerous it can be, really dangerous. And to get through a film and knowing it hurt, to be safe, have an amazing experience is because of a great AD and he was the best.”

The director ended his remarks on an emotional note. Near tears, he said, “May you be blessed with a relationship that I had with him. And i you have one already, hold them close, remind them that you love them. He would love this. He’d be so fucking happy right now. He would be so fucking pride and so happy.” 

At the DGA Awards ceremony, each of the five Theatrical Film nominees get to give an acceptance speech before the category winner is announced at the end. These speeches are interspersed throughout the show, between the other categories — like Commercial, Sports, Documentary Film, etc. 

Anderson was also the first to give his nominee speech, and ended up setting off a chain of thank you’s to Michelle Satter, the Founding Senior Director of Sundance Institute’s Artist Programs, who was seated next to Limited Series nominee and recent DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter. Throughout her long history at the Sundance Institute, Satter worked with and mentored several of the Theatrical Film nominees, including Anderson, Chloé Zhao (who was in the same Sundance class), and Ryan Coogler. As part of his remakrs, the “Sinners” director echoed Anderson’s sentiment of once wanting Satter as his agent, while “Hamnet” director Zhao referred to Satter as “the great mother” when she thanked her.

Chloé Zhao and Steven Spielberg attend the 78th annual Directors Guild of America Awards.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for DGA

Another tradition of the DGA Awards is for a friend or close collaborator to present the DGA medallion to each of the Theatrical Film nominees. That’s why Spielberg was present. The three-time DGA Award winner, who also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, is one of the executive producers on “Hamnet” that is currently nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. With Zhao as the last Theatrical Film nominee to receive her medallion before the category was called, Spielberg sat next to her (their table was front and center of the stage) as many other speakers shouted out Spielberg’s contributions to their work. That mirrored the experience of the last DGA Awards ceremony that the iconic filmmaker was nominated at, and in her speech, Zhao said she loved hearing Spielberg get the recognition. She joked, “I’ve been here three times and I want to play a drinking game every time your name is mentioned.”

Other stars that came out to present the medallion to their directors were “One Battle After Another” lead Leonardo DiCaprio, “Sinners” lead Michael B. Jordan, “Frankenstein” actor Jacob Elordi, and “Marty Supreme” lead Timothée Chalamet. All are current Oscar nominees. While none seemed to be directly pleading their case to also win an award come March 15, the most effective speeches in terms of charming Academy members were Chalamet, who got the most laughs for anecdotes (like his director Josh Safdie randomly telling him, “If you ever need a good alias, go by the name Mike Diapey,”) — and DiCaprio, who emphasized how the film shot locally. Noting that Los Angeles native Anderson “doesn’t simply use this town as a backdrop. He interrogates it,” DiCAprio continued, “He understands its strange beauty and madness better than anyone who’s ever pointed a camera here.” The Oscar-winning actor also quoted Scorsese’s recent praise of “One Battle After Another,” and said, “It’s a portrait of the country that hits the target exactly at the right moment.”

The DGA Award going to “One Battle After Another” is also an inauguration of sorts. It’s the biggest indicator so far that the film is still on track to win the Oscar for both Best Director and Best Picture. But the 2026 DGA Awards was also the first held under new guild president Christopher Nolan. While the new title got “The Odyssey” director a lot of shoutouts that were half playful, half earnest, Theatrical Film nominee Guillermo del Toro, honored for“Frankenstein,” best represented the audience sentiment when he said, “I love saying President Nolan. It’s so good saying ‘president’ with a good word after it.”

Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and team accept the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series award for ‘The Studio’ onstage during the 78th annual Directors Guild of America Awards.Getty Images for DGA

That was the closest the 2026 DGA speeches came to being political outside of union support, with directors Coogler and Safdie both commending the insurance the guild provides (particularly as each director has a child that is currently sick). “2000 Meters to Andriivka” director Mstyslav Chernov also accepted the DGA Award for Documentary Film. The Ukrainian filmmaker, who previously won the same award in 2024 for “20 Days in Mariupol,” which went on to win the Oscar, called attention to the ongoing conflict in his home country. Two years earlier, from when he first got on the Beverly Hilton hotel stage, he lamented his fellow directors who had to trade their cameras for guns to fight on the frontlines.

That stood in sharp contrast to the next category, Comedy Series, which presented by the night’s host, Kumail Nanjiani. Similar to the 2025 Emmys, “The Studio” helmers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg once again won for the episode “The Oner,” and joked about how much they put themselves between a rock and a hard place directing an episode about a film crew trying to shoot a oner during magic hour, with the episode itself being an elaborate oner shot during magic hour. The pair ultimately brought the night back to a place of commemoration, saying “There’s no one we wish we could thank in person at this moment more than we would love to thank Catherine O’Hara.” Goldberg went on to say that the late actress, who appears in the honored episode, was proof, “You can be an utter genius and also the nicest person in the entire world.”

dRogen ended their acceptance speech, the penultimate one of the night, and said, “It was an honor to direct her every day. We worked very hard to make the show good enough to warrant her time and her presence. And so ultimately we would like to thank the DGA for this, but we would mostly like to thank Catherine O’Hara for being such a wonderful person.”