Celine Song, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is a 35-year-old Korean-Canadian playwright-turned-filmmaker whose largely autobiographical feature directorial debut, Past Lives, is now nominated for the best picture Oscar, and whose script for it has brought her a best original screenplay nod. Filmmaker magazine called Past Lives “as confident as filmmaking debuts come,” while The Washington Post described Song as “a supremely confident filmmaker of exhilarating artistic promise” who has made “a quietly spectacular writing-directing debut.”
Consider Song’s awards season so far: Past Lives was awarded the best feature Gotham Award. Song won the Sundance Film Festival’s Vanguard Award, the Directors Guild of America’s best first-feature DGA Award, the National Board of Review’s best directorial debut award, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards’ New Generation Award. She was nominated for the best director and best screenplay Golden Globe awards; the best original screenplay BAFTA and Critics Choice awards, and the breakthrough director Gotham Award, while her film was nominated for the best film not in the English language BAFTA Award. On top of that, she is nominated for the best director and best screenplay Spirit Awards and the Writers Guild of America’s best original screenplay award, as well as the aforementioned best original screenplay Academy Award.
