Circa 2017-18, Natalie Portman got a lot of attention for loudly criticizing the Academy and other awards/guilds for the lack of nominations and attention for female directors. One year, at the Oscars, Portman actually wore a Dior cape embroidered with female directors’ names. What was slightly funny is that for several years following that moment, Natalie barely worked with any female directors. She just worked with dude after dude, all while actresses like Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Margot Robbie and Jodie Foster were all making huge efforts to work with women directors. Well, in recent years, Portman has gotten a bit better and she’s been steadily working with more women. At Sundance, Portman spoke out again about the lack of attention for female directors during this year’s awards season.

Natalie Portman is calling out the Oscars for snubbing female directors in the 2026 nominations. While stepping out at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to promote her new film The Gallerist, the actress shared her frustrations about the lack of female representation in the Best Director category.

“So many of the best films I saw this year were made by women,” Portman, 44, said while speaking with Variety. “You just see the barriers at every level because so many were not recognized at awards time. Between Sorry Baby and Left-Handed Girl and Hedda and The Testament of Ann Lee… Extraordinary films this year that I think a lot of people are enjoying and loving, but are not getting the accolades that they deserve,” she continued.

Chloé Zhao, who directed Hamnet, is the only woman up for Best Director this year. The category also includes Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme, Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value and Ryan Coogler for Sinners. Among the 10 nominated films in the Best Picture category, Hamnet is the only one directed by a woman.

Portman went on to speak to Variety about the challenges of getting a movie made today.

“Even when you pass the barriers of getting your financing, which is harder, getting into festivals, which is harder. Every step of the road is harder, and then you’re out and it’s great, and then it also doesn’t get the attention,” she said, noting, “We have a lot of work to do still. But joyfully, with a lot of joy, working with each other,” she added with a laugh, “and it’s a very special process to be in community with women on set.”

For The Gallerist, Portman worked with a female director, Cathy Yan. The dark comedy thriller, which also stars Jenna Ortega, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sterling K. Brown and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, follows a desperate gallery owner (Portman) who schemes to sell a dead man as art at Art Basel in Miami.

[From People]

She’s not wrong, and yet I feel like the examples she gave were never going to be major awards contenders either. Well, the Testament of Ann Lee was screwed over by their release schedule – if that had come out earlier in 2025, I’m sure more people would have seen it and talked about it as a contender. Hedda was interesting and well-directed, but it wasn’t super-awards-baity in my opinion. It really does go by year though – in recent years, there have been some really notable examples of women directors being truly snubbed, like Greta Gerwig and arguably Halina Reijn.

I also think that because of Portman and other women speaking up in the past decade, the Academy feels like they have to include at least one (and usually only one) woman in the director line-up. Chloe Zhao checked off a lot of boxes for their informal quota system.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.