The Oscars this year has a fresh new batch of faces (check out the full nominee list HERE).

When it comes directors, big names like Oliver Stone, Martine Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, Clint Eastwood and Steven Speilberg — who each had a big movie out this year — were left behind, as Hollywood Reporter reports.

But new directors like Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), Kennet Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea), and veteran Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge) took the gambit. Is this a new wave, and a new chapter, of film makers?

It appears older directors of the 1970s and 1980s are passing the baton to newer filmmakers. Is this the next generation?

“In the late 1960s, the arrival of directors such as Mike Nichols (The Graduate) and Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) heralded the collapse of the studio system and paved the way for a bold and radical group of directors, the likes of whom never have been seen since,” Stephen Galloway at HR points out. “It may be that these filmmakers’ simultaneous emergence is pure coincidence, and that the idea of an American New Wave is merely an outsider’s construct. Or it may be that they are emissaries of deeper change… Perhaps Jenkins, Chazelle and their peers are in the vanguard of a brilliant new generation to come. Or perhaps they are simply dazzling originals whose very originality sets them apart from any group.”

Pictured: Damien Chazelle (credit: FameFlynet Pictures) 

Pictured: Barry Jenkins (credit: FameFlynet) 

Pictured: Denis Villeneuve (credit: FameFlynet)