The 74th Annual Directors Guild of America Awards ceremony will take place Saturday, March 12th, 2022.

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: Jessica Kingdon, for Ascension (Not seen: Attica, Exterminate All the Brutes.)

Jessica Kingdon seems to be a firm subscriber of the “show, don’t tell” school of thought. Her documentary is hypnotic to watch and still very insightful.

---

Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal, for The Lost Daughter

Maggie Gyllenhaal got out of her cast some of the best performances of the year, all the while giving her film an uneasy mood, which results in an interesting but hard to watch experience.

---

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film: Paul Thomas Anderson, for Licorice Pizza

There is a bit of everything: PTA gets two lovely performances out of his two main actors, hysterical performances from his big-name supporting players, and gives the film a very clear visual identity. All the while coming up with a very entertaining film.