Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the best director award from the Directors Guild of America Saturday with her Iraq war thriller “The Hurt Locker,” a low-budget film gathering awards steam ahead of the Oscars. The winner of the Guild's top award has gone on to take the best director Oscar all but six times in the last 61 years. Oscar nominations will be announced next Tuesday and “The Hurt Locker” is expected to garner several nods, including best film and best director. Bigelow beat out four other directors, including her former husband James Cameron, who had won the Golden Globe for best director this month for his mega-budget blockbuster “Avatar.” “I am so deeply stunned and honored and proud,” Bigelow told the celebrity-heavy crowd of Hollywood directors and actors. “The Hurt Locker” tells the story of a three-man US military bomb squad that defuses explosives amid the fighting and insurgents. Many critics consider the film to be the most accurate portrayal of the Iraq war since it began in 2003. Bigelow, also a producer of the film, used little known actors and recreated the difficult conditions of Iraq by shooting mostly in the Middle East during the summer. The three other Directors Guild best director nominees were Quentin Tarantino for World War II saga “Inglourious Basterds,” Lee Daniels for his drama about a girl in Harlem “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire,” and Jason Reitman for his film on corporate downsizing “Up in the Air.”
