Sam Mendes, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi score Directors Guild film nominations

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

Sam Mendes scored a major awards-season victory when he won best director at Sunday's Golden Globes, and he followed it on Tuesday with a key honor from his peers.

The "1917" filmmaker has been nominated by the Directors Guild of America for outstanding directorial achievement in feature film for 2019.

Quentin Tarantino, whose "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" took best screenplay and comedy/musical at the Globes, is also in the field at the 72nd annual DGA Awards. Tarantino snagged nominations in 1995 for "Pulp Fiction" and in 2010 for "Inglourious Basterds."

Joining Tarantino and Mendes are Martin Scorsese ("The Irishman"), who won the DGA prize in 2007 for "The Departed," and first-time nominees Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite") and Taika Waititi ("Jojo Rabbit").

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Notable snubs include Noah Baumbach ("Marriage Story"), Todd Phillips ("Joker"), Pedro Almodovar ("Pain and Glory") and Greta Gerwig ("Little Women").

The DGA Awards are often a strong bellwether for the Academy Awards. In three of the past four years, four of the five nominees also landed Oscar nominations for best director. And since 2014, every DGA winner also won the Academy Award: Alfonso Cuaron for "Gravity" (2014), Alejandro G. Iñárritu for "Birdman" (2015) and "The Revenant" (2016), Damien Chazelle for "La La Land" (2017), Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water" (2018) and Cuaron last year for "Roma." Since 2000, only six films have won the DGA but failed to win the best-picture Oscar; in that same time period, there have only been three instances when the DGA winner hasn't also won the best-director Oscar.

The category for outstanding achievement by a first-time filmmaker features Mati Diop ("Atlantics"), Alma Har'el ("Honey Boy"), Melina Matsoukas ("Queen & Slim"), Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz ("The Peanut Butter Falcon") and Joe Talbot ("The Last Black Man in San Francisco").

Winners will be announced Jan. 25 at the Ritz-Carlton in Los Angeles.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Directors Guild nominates Sam Mendes, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi