The Directors Guild of America made history Saturday night, giving the group’s top prize for feature-film directing to Chloé Zhao (‘Nomadland’), the first woman of colour to receive the award and only the second woman ever to win in the category, after Kathryn Bigelow (‘The Hurt Locker’).
Zhao was considered the heavy favorite after a dominant awards-season run for her film that has also included top honors at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and Producers Guild Awards, and she will now enter Oscar night as the prohibitive front-runner, since the DGA winner has won the best-director Oscar 13 of the last 15 times.