Greta Gerwig is the highest-grossing female director of all time, but wasn’t Oscar-nominated for directing ‘Barbie’

– And the nominees are. The 2024 Oscar nominations were announced yesterday morning with some notable picks, like Lily Gladstone, whose Best Actress nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon makes her the first Native American up for the award.

But one omission drove debate all day. Greta Gerwig didn’t receive a nomination for Best Director for Barbie. The Mattel-backed project was the highest-grossing film of 2023 and made Gerwig the first solo female director to helm a film that earned $1 billion at the box office. Many commentators expected her to be among the year’s director nominees.

Barbie was hardly ignored—it earned eight nominations. America Ferrera was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, which included a widely shared monologue about the pressure of being a woman. Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script was nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (another controversy!). And the movie was among the 10 picks for Best Picture—which makes Gerwig the first female director to have her first three features (Barbie, Lady Bird, and Little Women) nominated for Best Picture.

And yet Gerwig’s shutout in the director category has touched a nerve with women. Memes pointed out that an Oscars nom for Ryan Gosling (for his performance as Ken), but not Gerwig and Margot Robbie—Barbie herself!—was a little too on the nose for a film that skewers the patriarchy.

The Best Director category has been one of the toughest for women to crack at the Oscars. It’s not a total shutout for women this year; Justine Triet is nominated for Anatomy of a Fall. She’s only the eighth woman ever nominated in the category; three have won over the ceremony’s soon-to-be 95-year history. While women’s films are nominated in other categories—in Best Picture, Barbie is joined by Anatomy of a Fall and Celine Song’s Past Lives—the directing award itself remains elusive.

Barbie fans may be understandably disappointed that the film that drove so much of the year’s cultural conversation—and box office revenue!—was excluded from one of the Oscars’ most prestigious categories. But like Ferrera said onscreen, reciting Gerwig’s script: “Always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged.”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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PARTING WORDS

"Obviously, I met the most broken version of myself this year, but now—the strongest...I feel like the universe has sent me a gift, and I’m ready to take it."

—Former women's soccer star Ali Krieger after a year that saw her professional retirement and a tumultuous divorce from former teammate Ashlyn Harris