It's also in contention for original screenplay, production design, costume design and make up and hair.
The film was praised for its direction, screenplay, production design, score, Joaquin Phoenix's performance and Scarlett Johansson's vocal portrayal of Samantha.
Front-runner, The King's Speech, has also been nominated for its cinematography, editing, screenplay, music, production design, sound and visual effects.
The movie, which chronicles a callow, illiterate Arab inmate's brutal education and rise to power during his six-year imprisonment, also won the awards for best original screenplay, editing, production design and cinematography.
It features readings from Proust's masterwork, "In Search of Lost Time"; the first public reading of sections of Harold Pinter's "Proust Screenplay," a production of the National Theater in London this fall, and musical selections from Proust contemporaries like Gabriel Faure and Reynaldo Hahn.
DuVernay's direction is very good; her screenplay, her production, and her cast are great, and if the petty politics of the mailing of screeners, the date of the movie's release (as some are speculating), or, for that matter, the absurd and spiteful polemics over the depiction of Lyndon Johnson have cost it recognition, shame on the Academy.
12 Years a Slave received near-universal acclaim by critics and audiences, for its acting (particularly Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o), Steve McQueen's direction, John Ridley's screenplay, its production values, and its faithfulness to Solomon Northup's account.
Before the fire, Linklater stored everything at Bastrop: drafts of his early screenplays, correspondence, production paperwork, props, and Super 8 films from his early years.
His screenplay, which the production notes inform us went through 40 drafts over 10 years, isn't content to wring elaborations on one theme.
Both pictures won nods in the overall film, British film, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, editing, production design, makeup and hair, costume, sound and music categories, but it was the heavyweight casts that pushed each production well into double figures.
Former leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (a civil rights organization that helped organize voter registration in the South) like Mr. Moses and Chuck McDew assisted Mr. Robinson in developing the screenplay and in production of the movie.
