Kathryn Bigelow with her Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for The Hurt Locker

Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties in 1976, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993 and The Power of the Dog in 2021, Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003, Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first female winner of the award for The Hurt Locker in 2009, Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird in 2016, Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman and Chloé Zhao, who became only the second woman to win the award for Nomadland in 2020, and Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall in 2023.

All but Seven Beauties were nominated for Best Picture with The Hurt Locker and Nomadland winning Bigelow and Zhao a second Oscar in that category. Bigelow was surprisingly not nominated for her direction of Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty (2012), netting her another nomination as one of its producers.

Other nominees for Best Picture directed by women who were not nominated for Best Director are:

Children of a Lesser God (1986) directed by Randa Haines
Awakenings (1990) directed by Penny Marshall
The Prince of Tides (1991) directed by Barbra Streisand
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) co-directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton
The Kids are Alright (2010) directed by Lisa Cholodenko
Winter's Bone (2010) directed by Debra Granik
Little Women (2019) directed by Greta Gerwig
CODA (2021) directed by Sian Heder
Barbie (2023) directed by Greta Gerwig
Past Lives (2023) directed by Celine Song

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