Guillermo del Toro wins top Directors Guild Award
The fantasy romance “The Shape of Water” added another key prize in its awards season run with Guillermo del Toro’s win at the Directors Guild Awards Saturday.
“The Shape of Water,” about a mute woman who falls in love with an underwater creature, has emerged as the awards season front runner with a Producers Guild Award and a leading 13 Academy Award nominations.
Del Toro said his movie is one that is, “Full of many reasons why it shouldn’t work and they are the reasons that it works.” He dedicated the honour to his mother and father, who has been ill.
He won out over fellow directors Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), Martin McDonagh (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”) and Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), although Peele did win the prize for first-time feature film for his blockbuster horror film.
“This whole thing is a very surreal, conflicting experience. This has been the best year of
my life hand’s down,” Peele said. “At the same time I’ve had to balance that with the knowledge that this is not a good year for this country. This is not a good year for many of us.”
Other winners Saturday included Matthew Heineman for the documentary “City of Ghosts,” Jean-Marc Valle for “Big Little Lies,” Reed Morano for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and
Glenn Weiss for directing the 89th Academy Awards.
Morano thanked her producers and Hulu for being, “the rare people who were seeking the opportunity to work with women instead of fearing it.”
Representation and the ongoing cultural shift happening in Hollywood and across the country regarding sexual misconduct was at least an undertone of many of the speeches of the evening, as the topics have been throughout awards season.
DGA President Thomas Schlamme kicked off the evening addressing the moment head on. He stressed a drive toward respectful and inclusive workplaces and said that “we must keep our foot firmly on the pedal and not let up” in their “decades long fight” to ensure the participation of women and people of colour in the director’s chair.
“This is not just a fight by women for women,” Schlamme said. “They didn’t create this problem.”
The DGA, which represents more than 17,000 entertainment industry professionals, sent its members a set of guidelines detailing procedures for handling sexual harassment on Thursday. The guild also joined the Anita Hill-chaired Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace.
Heineman, who won for “City of Ghosts,” about a group of citizen journalists who banded together after ISIS took over their land, took his moment on stage to spotlight those in his documentary.