Alejandro Iñarittu Wins Best Director for ‘The Revenant,’ Makes Oscar History
Alejandro G. Iñarritu just made Oscar history. The Revenant filmmaker took home the Academy Award for Best Director on Sunday, the third time in the awards’ history a director has won in two consecutive years. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was the last director to win the award back-to-back in 1950 and 1951, following John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley wins in 1941 and 1942, respectively.
After winning for Birdman last year, few expected Iñarritu to take home the Best Director statue again this year. But similarly, The Revenant has swept the Oscars. The film, which follows now first-time Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life fur trapper Hugh Glass, has garnered large amounts of controversy surrounding its environmentally challenging shoot. Iñarritu spoke about the difficult shoot during his Golden Globes acceptance speech, and during his Oscar speech ran over the time to comment on racial prejudices. The orchestra music even stopped playing to let Iñarritu finish his speech, which ended with him saying he hopes for a time when, “the color of our skin become as irrelevant as the length of our hair.”
The survival film also won the Oscar Best Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki.
Check out the full list of 2016 Oscar winners here.