The Gravity director put himself into pole position for the best directing Academy Award with his DGA win on January 25.

Cuarón prevailed over the other nominees for outstanding directorial achievement in feature film: Paul Greengrass for Captain Phillips, Steve McQueen for 12 Years A Slave, David O Russell for American Hustle and Martin Scorsese for The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Cuarón’s triumph stems from his first DGA nomination and means he becomes odds-on favourite to win the Oscar, although the DGA is not a cast-iron guarantee of success.

Last year Ben Affleck won the DGA for Argo and was famously not even nominated for an Academy Award, which eventually went to Ang Lee for Life Of Pi.

Jehane Noujaim won documentary honours for The Square and Steven Soderbergh won the movies for television and miniseries category for Behind The Candelabra.