While enrolled at SFAI, she was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study scholarship program in New York City. Based on Anita Shreve’s novel of the same name, Bigelow’s 2000 film The Weight of Water is a portrait of two women trapped in suffocating relationships. Bigelow next directed The Hurt Locker, which was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in September 2008 and released in the US in June 2009. She won the Directors Guild of America award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (becoming the first woman to win the award) and also received a Golden Globe nomination for her direction. She became the first woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker.