Oscars 2017: Damien Chazelle Wins Best Director

 Hollywood’s biggest night — the Oscars 2017 — are finally here, and we’ll be live-blogging to see which nominee wins Best Director!

There are five amazing directors up for the award for Best Director. Some, obviously, are more favored to win than others. We list the directors who are nominated below and put them in the order in which they are, in our opinion, most likely to win.

So here are the nominees, with the winner revealed at the bottom:

Moonlight: For the Oscars 2017, Barry Jenkins is up for directing Moonlight. Honestly, no one else even comes close. Barry has done an amazing job with a film that has been deservedly winning nearly every award that it’s been nominated for. If Moonlight doesn’t win the Best Director award at the Oscars 2017, it will be the biggest travesty that the Oscars will ever have done. The fact that this director finds himself as one of only a few black directors ever to be nominated for the award is sad enough. But the fact that he’s up against the award and has to compete with the likes of Mel Gibson is, perhaps, even worse.

Manchester by the Sea: A boring, depressing film, but one that’s a bit of a critical darling. If Moonlight must lose, let it be to this Oscars 2017 favorite.

La La Land: The boring, vanilla choice. But the Oscars 2017 committee may be wanting to play it safe. If they choose to go that route, this picture could take home the Best Director Oscar.

Arrival: Again, the Oscars don’t receive sci-fi films very well. So we consider this one’s chances of winning a bit of a long shot. However, given who else it’s up against, it’s probably better that it beats out Mel Gibson.

Hacksaw Ridge: The Oscars 2017 committee may have forgotten how awful Mel Gibson is, but we certainly haven’t. It doesn’t matter how good this movie is: the Oscars should blacklist Mel Gibson for life.

Related Story: Oscars 2017: The Live Winners and Results

Prediction: Moonlight
Winner: La La Land

Here’s his acceptance speech.