This is what the diversity breakdown of best director nominees for the Oscars looks like. This year provides a big opportunity for a breakthrough, as Buzzfeed’s Adam B. Vary explains:
At this year’s Academy Awards, Alfonso Cuarón could be the first Latino man to win the Oscar for Best Director (for the sci-fi film Gravity) — and given that he’s won the Directors Guild of America award, he is by far the odds-on favorite to win. If he doesn’t, however, the man who has a strong chance of scoring an upset is 12 Years a Slave’s director Steve McQueen — who would be the first black man to win in this category.
And this would be a very big deal: More than perhaps any other people in the world, film directors have had the greatest first-hand influence on how we see ourselves for over a century, as they’ve steered tens of thousands of film productions big and small, driving and defining one of (if not the) most influential representation of our culture for just about 100 years.
But when one looks at the nominees and winners for the Academy Award for Best Director — the best barometer we have for whom the film industry regards as the finest film directors of their respective years — an overwhelming majority of them have been white men.
By the way, that sliver of the pie shown that makes up people who aren’t white and male represents just 17 people.