Ang Lee Will Receive Lifetime Achievement Honor at 2025 DGA Awards
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced that it will present Ang Lee with the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Feb. 8, 2025. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker is only the 37th director to receive the distinguished honor, awarded at the discretion of current and past DGA presidents, in the Guild’s 88-year history.
“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. “For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres — from period drama to comedy, adventure to western, superhero to martial arts — always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself and consistently achieving cinematic excellence.
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“Through his films, Ang invites his audiences to explore complex characters that linger in your heart and mind long after the screen has gone dark,” Glatter continued. “From his earliest features like The Wedding Banquet to artistic and commercial successes like Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang’s work is consistently recognized by critics, festivals and audiences for its brilliant storytelling and technological innovations. His unique approach has left an indelible mark on the history of cinema that will be celebrated for generations to come. The DGA couldn’t be prouder to honor Ang Lee as a recipient of our lifetime achievement award.”
Lee has been a member of the DGA since 1996 and has won multiple awards from the guild over the years. A four-time feature film DGA Award nominee, Lee won the award twice, once in 2000 for the martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and again in 2005 for the western romance drama Brokeback Mountain, for which he also won the Academy Award for best director. His first nomination came for the period drama Sense and Sensibility in 1995 and again in 2012 for the adventure film Life of Pi. In 2018, Lee was also presented with a DGA honor celebrating his contributions to American culture through his support of the film and television industry.
“I am honored to be recognized in such an incredible way by my beloved Guild,” Lee said in a statement. “To be given the DGA lifetime achievement award is a momentous achievement for me personally and an opportunity to reflect on what my work has meant to this amazing community of my fellow filmmakers.”
Cecil B. DeMille became the first filmmaker to receive a DGA lifetime achievement award in 1953, 17 years after the guild was founded. Additional recipients include Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and, most recently, Spike Lee, who was bestowed with the award in 2022.
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