Nadine Labaki

Five of her planets sit in air signs and one each in fire and water, with three in earth. Air stands outside a situation and works out exactly what it consists of, which for a director making films about children living on the margins of a city is the faculty the work depends on. Labaki was the first Arab woman nominated for the foreign film Oscar.

The Sun sits on the twenty ninth degree of Aquarius, the last of the sign, with Jupiter further back in it, and the Moon answers from Capricorn. Aquarius belongs to a society while standing one deliberate step outside it, and Capricorn counts what things actually cost. A film that puts a child in front of a court to sue his own parents is exactly that pairing: the outsider's view, costed to the last.

Two grand trines run through this chart, one holding the Sun, Saturn and Uranus and the other Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, so the same pair of heavy planets sits at the base of both. Grand trines hand somebody a capability rather than making them fight for it. Saturn makes easy contact with Uranus at under a quarter of a degree, and four of the ten were retrograde.

Jupiter was back on its Aquarius starting degree on 3 December 2021, at forty seven. Aquarius measures the distance from the expected road rather than the progress down it, and four laps precede it. For a director whose nomination was itself a first, that is the measure the record was always going to be read by. Mercury, retrograde at her birth, is the planet of the writing itself facing backwards, which for a director who works on a script for years before shooting is the detail worth keeping. Having both grand trines share the same base means the ease in this chart comes from one place rather than two, and it is the place that handles structure.