by Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Guillermo Del Toro took home the top prize of "Best Feature Director Award" at the 70th annual Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards on Saturday, cementing him as the odds-on favorite to nab the Best Director Oscar a month from now.

Christopher Nolan was also in contention for Best Director for his epic war movie Dunkirk, which has grossed 525 million U.S. dollars to date."Dunkirk is a very technical film about the random nature of violence and how we deal with that as part of the human experience," Nolan said.

Other nominees included Greta Gerwig from Lady Bird, Martin McDonagh from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Jordan Peele from Get Out.

How likely is Del Toro to win the Oscar this year? Reports showed that only four times in 70 years (not counting 4 technical exceptions) that the DGA Best Director winner did not nab the directorial Academy Award.

Adding to the fact that Del Toro has run the table at other top Award ceremonies including pocketing Best Director Awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Awards and the Critics Choice Awards, he is more likely to win the Oscar this year.

Del Toro also picked up a Best Picture trophy from the Producer's Guild of America two weeks ago, so speculation is running high that he might also rake in a Best Picture win for Shape of Water at the Oscars next month.

It's worthy of note that only once in the last five years has an American director, Damien Chazelle, landed the Best Director award in 2016.

Prior to that, talented Mexican directors got three out of five Best Director Oscars, namely Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity in 2013, Alejandro G. Inarritu for Birdman in 2014, and Inarritu again in 2015 for The Revenant, who with Del Toro are known as "Three Amigos of Cinema" in Mexico.

One of the most closely-watched categories was Best First-Time Director, with the top two award favorites, Jordan Peele from Get Out and Greta Gerwig from Ladybird running neck and neck ahead of fellow nominees, namely Emmy Award-winner Aaron Sorkin from Molly's Game, Geremy Jasper from Patti Cake$, and William Oldroyd from Lady Macbeth.

Jordan Peele took home the DGA's Best First-Time Director Award, for his racially-oriented horror film Get Out, which has grossed 255 million dollars worldwide on a 4.5-million-dollar budget.

Another hotly contended directing award category was Best Documentary, with former DGA winner Matthew Heineman from City of Ghosts winning out.

City of Ghosts has a uncompromising insider view of the activism and resistance of a courageous citizen-journalist group called Raqqa's Being Slaughtered Silently, or R.B.S.S., which records and broadcasts to the world the atrocities being committed in Raqqa, Syria by ISIS terrorists.

In the field of movies for television and mini series, another first-time DGA winner, Jean-Marc Vallee, took home the gold for HBO's dramatic Emmy Award-winning series on domestic abuse Big Little Lies, starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.