Christopher Nolan, the director behind blockbuster movies like “Oppenheimer” and “Interstellar,” has been elected the president of the Directors Guild of America, the organization announced on Saturday.
The guild, a labor organization that represents more than 19,500 film, television and other directors and members of directorial teams, works to protect that group’s creative and economic rights. Nominees for the guild’s feature-film award, the organization’s highest prize, often go on to receive an Oscar nomination for best director. In the 2025 awards season, Sean Baker, the director of “Anora,” won both the guild’s top award and the Oscar for best director.
“To be elected president of the Directors Guild of America is one of the greatest honors of my career,” Nolan said in a news release. “Our industry is experiencing tremendous change, and I thank the guild’s membership for entrusting me with this responsibility.”
The film industry has been struggling in recent years because of the lasting effects of labor strikes in 2023, declining production levels and sagging box office sales brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Nolan has been a member of the guild since 2001 and has served on its national board and its Western Directors Council since 2015. He also leads the guild’s Theatrical Creative Rights Committee and its Artificial Intelligence Committee.
Nolan, who made his directorial debut with a short film in the late 1980s, has become known for expansive cinematography and mind-bending plots in movies like “Memento” (2000), a psychological thriller about an insurance investigator hunting for his wife’s murderer. That film was nominated for two Academy Awards.
He went on to direct such notable films as “Insomnia” (2002), the “Dark Knight” trilogy (2005-12) and “Dunkirk” (2017). “Oppenheimer” (2023), which tells the story of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the nuclear bomb, earned nearly a billion dollars at the box office and won seven Academy Awards, including best director and best picture.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
The post Christopher Nolan Elected President of the Directors Guild of America appeared first on New York Times.
