The 71st Annual Directors Guild of America Awards ceremony will take place Saturday, February 2nd, 2019.

As I have been doing for a few years, as we get into the awards season, I’ll post the fictional ballots for some of the guild awards, showing what my vote would be if I had one. I will, as a rule, abstain from my fictional vote if I haven’t seen at least half of the nominees. And to be perfectly clear, I’m not a member of any of these guilds and organizations.

The list of nominees can be seen here.

Here it goes:

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary: abstain (Not seen any of the five nominated films.)

Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director: abstain (Not seen: Eighth Grade, Blindspotting, A Private War, Sorry to Bother You.)

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film: Alfonso Cuarón, for ROMA

The vision of how this story had to be told shows up in every scene; Cuarón is, in a way, remembering events from his past, and the aesthetics of the film are a result of that idea. He also must be commended by the performances extracted from his cast.