In recent years, there has been a great deal of discourse on ways the Academy could tweak the Oscars in order to increase the telecast’s ratings or honor films, filmmakers, and performers who have been underrepresented at past ceremonies. Many of these proposed changes involve the show’s award categories in some way, either adding new ones or altering existing ones. While many worthy ideas have been introduced, there is one specific category that the Academy desperately needs to consider adding: Best First Feature. An award honoring the best directorial debut of the year seems like such an obvious inclusion that it’s surprising the Academy has not added it already. This new category would allow the Oscars to recognize smaller movies, introduce the public to films they may not be familiar with, and honor films and filmmakers that don’t have a chance in some of the bigger categories.
Best First Feature Would Shine a Light on Emerging Filmmakers
When assessing the value of this new category, one only needs to look back as far as last year's Oscars. The ceremony honoring the films of 2023 was dominated by Christopher Nolan's breathtaking cinematic achievement, Oppenheimer. The film was nominated for 13 awards, ultimately winning seven, including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, and, of course, Best Picture. Oppenheimer's success left very little to fight over for the other films in contention, including the one most notable for this discussion, Celine Song's Past Lives. Although Past Lives did receive two nominations, including one for Best Picture, the film walked away empty-handed, and Song was omitted from Best Director. Had there been a Best First Feature category, the Academy would have been able to spread the wealth and shine a light on this great film and its talented director.
Charlotte Wells is another recent first-time filmmaker who was deserving of the bigger platform this award would have potentially offered. Her 2022 debut, Aftersun, garnered immense critical praise but only received one nomination from the Academy — Best Actor for its star, Paul Mescal. There exists a nearly endless number of filmmakers who made their debuts recently and would have benefited from this proposed category. That list includes Raine Allen-Miller for Rye Lane, Savanah Leaf for Earth Mama, Lila Neugebauer for Causeway, John Patton Ford for Emily the Criminal, Domee Shi for Turning Red, Emma Seligman for Shiva Baby, Michael Sarnoski for Pig, Radha Blank for The Forty-Year-Old Version, and Andrew Patterson for The Vast of Night. Collectively, all the films just mentioned earned only two Oscar nominations and zero wins. In fact, many of these films belong to genres that are often overlooked by the Academy. So, not only would a Best First Feature award help to celebrate storytellers who the Academy would otherwise snub, but it would also bring a sense of variety to the ceremony in terms of the types of films nominated.
As it pertains to 2024, there are several great debuts that the Academy will most likely fail to recognize. It is hard to imagine films like Good One, Hundreds of Beavers, In a Violent Nature, Janet Planet, The People's Joker, Dìdi, and Problemista having much of a presence at the upcoming Oscars. That is a shame, though, as these films are some of the best underseen movies of the year.
What and Who Would Be Eligible?
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While Best First Feature would be new to the Oscars, it certainly isn't a novel idea in the world of awards shows. It currently exists in some form at the DGA Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, and BAFTAs. Moreover, a similar idea occurs in other areas of popular culture with things like Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards and Rookie of the Year in sports. As there always seems to be controversy regarding which musical acts should be eligible for Best New Artist when Grammy nominations are announced, the Academy would need to have clear rules for what and who should be able to be nominated for Best First Feature if they were to add it.
This category should only recognize filmmakers who have made their first feature-length film. Meaning, if someone directed short films or television episodes prior to their feature debut, they would still be eligible. Although this seems like a fairly straightforward concept, it's not hard to see how controversy could emerge. Consider a film that is likely to be nominated for Best Picture this year, Nickel Boys, and its director RaMell Ross. While Nickel Boys is Ross' first narrative feature film, he did direct the documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening in 2018. This creates a difficult question as to whether Ross would theoretically be eligible for consideration if Best First Feature existed at this year's awards. Since documentaries are technically eligible to be nominated in categories like Best Picture and Best International Feature, it stands to reason that Ross would have been able to earn a Best First Feature nomination for his 2018 documentary, but not Nickel Boys.
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The career of one of Hollywood's greatest active directors, Greta Gerwig, can be used to demonstrate another possible controversy that this category could cause. While Lady Bird was at times incorrectly described as Gerwig's directorial debut upon its release in 2017, her actual first directing credit came from the 2008 film Nights and Weekends, which she co-directed with Joe Swanberg. Though this was a collaborative effort, her work as a director on Nights and Weekends would have made Lady Bird ineligible in Best First Feature.
Unfortunately, for those of us rooting for the inclusion of Best First Feature, the Academy doesn't add categories often. Since 1948, they have only introduced three new categories: Best Makeup and Hairstyling in 1981, Best Animated Feature in 2001, and earlier this year, they announced Best Casting would be included in the ceremony starting in 2025. Hopefully, the Academy will change its ways and consider adding Best First Feature soon, though, as it would be a tremendous way to celebrate independent cinema and emerging storytellers.
Past Lives is streaming on Hulu in the U.S.
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Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.
Custom Image by Zanda Rice
English (US) ·