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Campion Wins Top Hollywood Director Prize for ‘Power of the Dog’

New Zealand director Jane Campion was honored for "The Power of the Dog," starring Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons - AFP
New Zealand director Jane Campion was honored for "The Power of the Dog," starring Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons - AFP
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Campion Wins Top Hollywood Director Prize for ‘Power of the Dog’

New Zealand director Jane Campion was honored for "The Power of the Dog," starring Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons - AFP
New Zealand director Jane Campion was honored for "The Power of the Dog," starring Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons - AFP

Jane Campion hailed the shattering of Hollywood's glass ceiling as her movie "The Power of the Dog" was named the year's best film by her fellow directors Saturday -- a major accolade which historically leads to Oscars glory.

Campion won the Directors Guild of America's top prize for her Netflix adaptation of a Western novel about the toxic masculinity of sexually repressed cowboys, fending off illustrious rivals at the Los Angeles gala including Steven Spielberg.

Campion is the third woman to ever win the top Directors Guild of America prize, after Kathryn Bigelow for 2008's "The Hurt Locker," and Chloe Zhao last year for "Nomadland."

The New Zealand auteur said it was increasingly common to hear about glass ceilings being shattered during Hollywood's award season, and that "perhaps it's time to claim a sense of victory on that front."

"We've come so far and what's more, we're never going backwards," she said, before capping the night by taking the top prize, presented by last year's winner Zhao, AFP reported.

"I'm so proud of you... I'm here because I care about women having voices as well," said Campion.

Campion, who was first nominated in 1994 for "The Piano," earlier in the night reflected on a time when she was frequently "the only woman in the room."

"I remember that outsider feeling as I fought to get my stories told, to bring dynamic stories from underserved perspectives to light in a male-dominated field."

Maggie Gyllenhaal won best first-time director for "The Lost Daughter," a drama about the challenges and taboos surrounding motherhood.

Gyllenhaal -- until now primarily known as an actress in films such as "The Dark Knight" and "Secretary" -- said watching Campion's "The Piano" as a teen had "changed my life" and sparked a desire to one day direct.

"I think it is one of the real reasons that I am standing here and that ultimately, I got brave enough to say what I wanted," said Gyllenhaal.

- 'Dangerous' -

In the last nine years, only one director -- Sam Mendes -- has won the top DGA award and failed to then win best director at the Oscars, a fact that propels Campion to firm favorite status for the Academy Awards on March 27.

While Campion won on Saturday, many stars and nominees also devoted their speeches to fellow nominee Spielberg, with Rita Moreno hailing a "wizard," Denis Villeneuve a "giant" and Spike Lee "the godfather of cinema."

Spielberg, on his 12th DGA nomination, admitted that remaking the beloved musical "West Side Story" had been "really scary."

"It was terrifying, and I gave up a whole bunch of times. And every single time I said 'this is just too dangerous,'" the legendary director of "Jaws," "Schindler's List" and "Jurassic Park" said.

Lee received the DGA's lifetime achievement award -- the 35th person in Hollywood history to be granted the honor, and the first Black man.

"Attica," by Stanley Nelson, which recounts the United States' deadliest prison riot, won best documentary, beating musician Questlove's strongly favored "Summer of Soul."

The protest at Attica prison in 1971 New York state -- by mainly Black and Latino inmates -- ended in 43 deaths as law enforcement stormed the prison.

- 'Picking a successor' -

Although not broadcast on television and lower key than some other Hollywood awards, the DGAs are longer-running, and its 18,000 voters including the industry's top directors offer prestigious recognition.

They also honor the year's best TV episodes, with an installment of "Hacks" taking best comedy and "The Underground Railroad" limited series.

Best drama prize was a foregone conclusion -- all five nominated episodes were from the same show, HBO's "Succession."

"We're so glad that we don't have to choose the winners," said Brian Cox, who plays the patriarch of a squabbling media dynasty on "Succession."

"Because picking any of these incredible directors is as difficult as a parent picking a successor for his business -- and that is something I would never ever do."

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Fans Criticize Beyoncé for Shirt Calling Native Americans 'the Enemies of Peace'

Beyonce, center, attends the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, that was presented in Paris, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Beyonce, center, attends the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, that was presented in Paris, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
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Fans Criticize Beyoncé for Shirt Calling Native Americans 'the Enemies of Peace'

Beyonce, center, attends the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, that was presented in Paris, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Beyonce, center, attends the men's Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2026 collection, that was presented in Paris, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A T-shirt worn by Beyoncé during a Juneteenth performance on her “Cowboy Carter” tour has sparked a discussion over how Americans frame their history and caused a wave of criticism for the Houston-born superstar.

The T-shirt worn during a concert in Paris featured images of the Buffalo Soldiers, who belonged to Black US Army units active during the late 1800s and early 1900s. On the back was a lengthy description of the soldiers that included

“Their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.”

Images of the shirt and videos of the performance are also featured on Beyoncé’s website, The Associated Press reported.

As she prepares to return to the US for performances in her hometown this weekend, fans and Indigenous influencers took to social media to criticize Beyoncé for framing Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries as anything but the victims of American imperialism and promoting anti-Indigenous language.

A publicist for Beyoncé did not respond to requests for comment.

Who were the Buffalo Soldiers? The Buffalo Soldiers served in six military units created after the Civil War in 1866. They were comprised formerly enslaved men, freemen, and Black Civil War soldiers and fought in hundreds of conflicts — including in the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II — until they were disbanded in 1951.

As the quote on Beyoncé’s shirt notes, they also fought numerous battles against Indigenous peoples as part of the US Army's campaign of violence and land theft during the country's westward expansion.

Some historians say the moniker “Buffalo Soldiers” was bestowed by the tribes who admired the bravery and tenacity of the fighters, but that might be more legend than fact. “At the end of the day, we really don’t have that kind of information,” said Cale Carter, director of exhibitions at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston.

Carter and other museum staff said that, only in the past few years, the museum made broader efforts to include more of the complexities of the battles the Buffalo Soldiers fought against Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries and the role they played in the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. They, much like many other museums across the country, are hoping to add more nuance to the framing of American history and be more respectful of the ways they have caused harm to Indigenous communities.

“We romanticize the Western frontier,” he said. “The early stories that talked about the Buffalo Soldiers were impacted by a lot of those factors. So you really didn’t see a changing in that narrative until recently.”

There has often been a lack of diverse voices discussing the way Buffalo Soldiers history is framed, said Michelle Tovar, the museum's director of education. The current political climate has put enormous pressure on schools, including those in Texas, to avoid honest discussions about American history, she said.

“Right now, in this area, we are getting push back from a lot of school districts in which we can’t go and teach this history," Tovar said. "We are a museum where we can at least be a hub, where we can invite the community regardless of what districts say, invite them to learn it and do what we can do the outreach to continue to teach honest history.”

Historians scrutinize reclamation motive Beyoncé's recent album “Act II: Cowboy Carter” has played on a kind of American iconography, which many see as her way of subverting the country music genre's adjacency to whiteness and reclaiming the cowboy aesthetic for Black Americans. Last year, she became the first Black woman ever to top Billboard's country music chart, and “Cowboy Carter” won her the top prize at the 2025 Grammy Awards, album of the year.

“The Buffalo Soldiers play this major role in the Black ownership of the American West,” said Tad Stoermer, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University. “In my view, (Beyoncé is) well aware of the role that these images play. This is the ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour for crying out loud. The entire tour, the entire album, the entire piece is situated in this layered narrative.”

But Stoermer also points out that the Buffalo Soldier have been framed in the American story in a way that also plays into the myths of American nationalism.

As Beyoncé’s use of Buffalo Soldiers imagery implies, Black Americans also use their story to claim agency over their role in the creation of the country, said Alaina E. Roberts, a historian, author and professor at Pittsburgh University who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to present day.

“That’s the category in which she thought maybe she was coming into this conversation, but the Buffalo Soldiers are even a step above that because they were literally involved in not just the settlement of the West but of genocide in a sense,” she said.

Online backlash builds ahead of Houston shows Several Native influencers, performers, and academics took to social media this week to criticize Beyoncé or call the language on her shirt anti-Indigenous. “Do you think Beyoncé will apologize (or acknowledge) the shirt,” indigenous.tv, an Indigenous news and culture Instagram account with more than 130,000, asked in a post Thursday.
Many of her critics, as well as fans, agree. A flood of social media posts called out the pop star for the historic framing on the shirt.

“The Buffalo Soldiers are an interesting historical moment to look at. But we have to be honest about what they did, especially in their operations against Indigenous Americans and Mexicans,” said Chisom Okorafor, who posts on TikTok under the handle @confirmedsomaya.

Okorafor said there is no “progressive” way to reclaim America's history of empire building in the West, and that Beyoncé’s use of Western symbolism sends a problematic message.

“Which is that Black people too can engage in American nationalism," she said. "Black people too can profit from the atrocities of American empire. It is a message that tells you to abandon immigrants, Indigenous people, and people who live outside of the United States. It is a message that tells you not only is it a virtue to have been born in this country but the longer your line extends in this country the more virtuous you are.”