With the annual Academy Awards, there is prestige, these are predictions, and there is an immense amount of controversy. Usually relating to the many snubs the Academy has unleashed on any given year, the Oscars never seems to be able to escape its mistakes. From the snubs of that year to entire genres, genders, and races, the Oscars always have talking points.

The Oscars can get it right, and even if a brilliant filmmaker gets snubbed for years, they usually get their Oscar, look at Roger Deakins, for example. However, some filmmakers never get that golden statue (look at Alfred Hitchcock). Here are some of the many fantastic working filmmakers who have, surprisingly, not yet won an Oscar.

Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott is one of the most well known and revered directors in Hollywood. Some overtime, have criticized his unexciting style of direction, but there is no denying the quality of the movie he has crafter over the years.

Scott has directed classics like Alien and Blade Runner and has four Best Director nominations for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and The Martian. He seemed poised to win for the latter, and a lot believe he should have won for Gladiator over Steven Soderbergh, but alas Scott has no Oscars.

Dean Deblois

There are a few directors of animation who have never secured an Oscar. Ron Clements created brilliant work in Aladdin and The Little Mermaid before the Best Animated Feature award existed and was unable to earn the prize for Moana or Princess And The Frog. Tim Burton has never won an award either as a director of live-action or animation.

Dean Deblois, though was codirector of Lilo And Stitch and directed all of the How To Train Your Dragon movies. None of that trilogy won Best Animated Feature. Had the first came out in any year, but in 2010 it would have been a shoo-in, but Toy Story 3 exists. The third installment in 2020 lost out to Toy Story 4. The second seemed to be poised for a win but lost to Big Hero 6.

Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson is a unique, eccentric, brilliant filmmaker with an awesome filmography and a career that is likely to see him pick up an Oscar of some sort in the future. But surprisingly, he has not won one yet, despite seven nominations.

He lost Best Animated Feature in 2010 and 2019 for Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Isle Of Dogs. He failed to capture Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. His directorial work was also not awarded for the latter, nor did it win Best Picture. The French Dispatch is out soon, so an Oscar may come as early as 2021 for Anderson.

Hoyte Van Hoytem

Hoyte Van Hoytema is one of the finest working cinematographers working today. While not as known by name as the people on this list or as other cinematographers such as Roger Deakins, his work is undeniable.

He broke into notoriety for his work on Let The Right One In, before going on to be DP on The Fighter and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Some of his best work includes Spike Jonze’s Her,  Ad Astra, Spectre, and, of course, his collaborations with Christopher Nolan on Interstellar and Dunkirk, having only one Oscar nomination that being for the latter. He collaborates again with Nolan on Tenet so it could be his time soon.

Thomas Newman

How Thomas Newman has not won an Oscar for his incredible work in scoring film is insane. He is one of the most excellent scorers of movie music in history and the finest to have never won an Oscar, all despite a jaw-dropping fifteen nominations stretching from 1995-2020.

Some of Newman’s best work includes The Shawshank Redemption, Finding Nemo, 1917, Wall-E, American Beauty, Road To Perdition, Saving Mr. Banks, Skyfall, The Green Mile and so on. Yes, you are right; it is insane that Newman has not yet won an Oscar.

David Fincher

David Fincher is an outstanding director and has made some of the best movies of the past thirty years. But despite this, Fincher has never been able to achieve Academy recognition, with only two nominations for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and The Social Network.

Fincher’s outstanding orchestration of Aaron Sorkin’s script in The Social Network should have seen Fincher take home the Oscar. Out with that but, films like Zodiac, Gone Girl, Fight Club, and Se7en make you wonder if the insanely talented director will ever take home an Oscar for his cold, tense, deliberate work.

David Lynch

David Lynch is one of the best directors in modern filmmaking. But, with the four Oscar nominations he has, and an honorary award, the auteur seems to have received all the love he will get from the Academy.

How Lynch’s abstract ideas and outstanding filmmaking skills as a director and screenwriter have not won him a competitive Oscar at some point is super surprising. Films like Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Wild At Heart, and more show just how brilliant Lynch is, and who knows, maybe one day he has an Oscar winner in him.

Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the finest working filmmakers today; some would argue the very best. He has written and directed some of the best movies of a generation, yet has never taken home a Best Director or Best Screenplay Oscar, only eight nominations.

His work on There Will Be Blood is unbelievable and earned him three big nominations, with another three screenplay nominations for Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Inherent Vice. Another directorial nomination came for Phantom Thread, for which he also got a Best Picture nomination. His work on The Master was never recognized. While he draws comparisons to Kubrick, everyone hopes he does manage to get a directorial or screenplay Oscar, unlike the late great filmmaker who only received love for Best Visual Effects.

Any Great Female Director

In the history of the Oscars, only one woman has won the accolade of Best Director, that being Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. In total, only five women have earned nominations for a Best Director Oscar.

There have been female winners in other categories, such as the brilliant Sofia Coppola winning Best Original Screenplay for Lost In Translation. However, there are so many excellent female filmmakers today, such as Greta Gerwig, Lynne Ramsay, Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins, Céline Sciamma, Marielle Heller, Jane Campion, and so many more. It is both shocking and unfair that so few female directors have even gotten nominated never mind won. 

Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan is one of the best filmmakers alive today and the argument is solid enough to say he is the best. He is the king of the blockbuster, and perhaps the best working auteur there is. Somehow though, the Academy keeps snubbing his directorial and screenwriting efforts.

Somehow Nolan only has one Best Director nomination, for Dunkirk, and two Best Original Screenplay nominees for Memento and Inception, with the latter and Dunkirk, also earning him Best Picture nominations. How was Inception not nominated for Best Director? How did the Dark Knight trilogy get no love? No wins for any of his spectacular efforts, and no nominations for other of his incredible pictures. Perhaps Tenet will change his luck, but history is not on his side.