All eyes will be on Payal Kapadia and her film All We Imagine As Light at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards. Payal is nominated in the Best Director category, a first for an Indian filmmaker. If she ends up winning, she could script history. But the category is stacked in a hard-to-predict awards season with no clear frontrunner. (Also read: Golden Globe Awards 2025: Payal Kapadia scripts history, scores Best Director nomination for All We Imagine As Light)
Can Payal Kapadia win?
All We Imagine As Light also scored a nomination in the Best Motion Picture in a Non-English Language category. The other nominees include Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez; Sean Baker for Anora; Edward Berger for Conclave; Brady Corbet for The Brutalist; and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance.
The Golden Globe Awards are most often the first major indicator of the awards season culminating with the Academy Awards. At the Golden Globes, Kapadia has a strong case for the Best Director category, and if she does end up winning, she will find herself firmly in the Oscar conversation. However, there are other indicators that add up to the race.
The other contenders
The only other non-English film in the Best Director category besides All We Imagine As Light is Emilia Pérez, for which Jacques Audiard is nominated. Now Emilia Pérez has set the record for the most nominations ever for a film in the musical/comedy categories, with 10. This certainly shows the big love for the drug cartel musical drama film that vowed Cannes earlier this year. Audiard, who also scored nominations in the Best Screenplay and Best Original Score categories is clearly a strong favourite. He is no stranger to the HFPA, with two of his previous films The Prophet and Rust and Bone, having received in the non-English film category. If he wins, the Oscar race is his to beat.
The other strong contender in the Best Director category is Brady Corbet with his 3 hour-long epic drama of a Holocaust survivor The Brutalist. With 7 nominations, The Brutalist has been building a strong momentum ever since it won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce also have strong chances at winning the acting prizes but if there’s any legitimate odds-on bet for The Brutalist to take home a Golden Globe, it is in the Best Director category.
Edward Berger’s Conclave has 6 nominations while Coraline Fargeat’s body-horror epic The Substance and Sean Baker’s Anora share five each.
Final thoughts
Kapadia’s win in the Best Director category will certainly be looked at as a surprise win, although the Golden Globes have primarily kept it safe when it comes to this category. In the last five years, all of the films have been US productions, with three of the winners also receiving the Oscar for Best Director.
All We Imagine As Light has a better shot at the Non-English feature film race instead. It certainly has the most momentum in this category, having won numerous critics circle awards in the last few weeks. The Gotham Awards, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, San Diego Film Critics Society, Chicago Film Critics Association, Toronto Film Critics Association and more have chosen the film as the Best Foreign Language Film of the year. Sight and Sound recently called it the best film of the year, a momentous feat for any title, where it beat out competition from frontrunners like The Seed of the Sacred Fig, I’m Still Here, and Anora.
Gandhi, the biopic drama by Richard Attenborough is the only other Indian co-production to win in the Non-English feature film category, back in 1982. Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! was the other film, directed by an female filmmaker to be nominated, in 1988. In 2022, SS Rajamouli’s RRR also scored a nomination in the same category.
The Golden Globe awards will stream LIVE and exclusively in India on Lionsgate Play on 6th January starting 6:30 AM IST.