OSCAR NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

NEW YORK: David Fincher’s Mank led nominations to the 93rd Academy Awards with 10 nods on Monday, and for the first time, two women - Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell were nominated for best director.

Eight films were nominated for best picture. Mank was joined by Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, Zhao’s Nomadland, Judas and the Black Messiah, Sound of Metal, Minari, The Father and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

History was made in the best director category. Only five women have ever been nominated in the category before. Zhao is the first woman of Asian descent nominated. The other nominees were Lee Isaac Chung for Minari, David Fincher for Mank and Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round.

Among performers, it’s the most diverse slate of nominees ever — and a far cry from the allwhite acting nominees that spawned the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag five years ago.

Nine of the 20 acting nominees are people of colour, including a posthumous best-actor nomination for Chadwick Boseman, and nods for Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Steven Yeun (Minari), Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah), Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night in Miami), Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Andra Day (The People vs. Billie Holiday) and Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari).

Davis landed her fourth Oscar nomination, making Davis the most nominated Black actress ever.

Other nominees for best actress are: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman; Frances McDormand, Nomadland; Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman. The Academy Awards would typically have happened by now but this year were postponed by two months due to the pandemic. They will instead be telecast April 25.