Academy Award for Best Director
The 2022 recipients: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Awarded for	Excellence in Cinematic Direction Achievement
Country	United States
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
First awarded	1929 (for direction in films released during the 1927/1928 film season)
Most recent winner	Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Most awards	John Ford (4)
Most nominations	William Wyler (12)
Website	oscars.org

The Academy Award for Best Director (officially known as the Academy Award of Merit for Directing) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Director winner.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with the award being split into "Dramatic" and "Comedy" categories; Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone won for 7th Heaven and Two Arabian Knights, respectively.^[1] However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies.^[2] Nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the academy.^[3][4][5]

For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year. However, after the nomination of Michael Curtiz for two films, Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters, at the 11th Academy Awards, the rules were revised so that an individual could only be nominated for one film at each ceremony.^[6] That rule has since been amended, although the only director who has received multiple nominations in the same year was Steven Soderbergh for Erin Brockovich and Traffic in 2000, winning the award for the latter. The Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 88 films that won Best Picture and were also nominated for Best Director, 67 won the award.^[7][8]

Since its inception, the award has been given to 74 directors or directing teams. As of the 2023 ceremony, American filmmaking duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are the most recent winner in this category for their work on Everything Everywhere All at Once and the third duo to win after Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) and the Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men).

Winners and nominees

In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of film release in Los Angeles County, California; the ceremonies are always held the following year.^[9] For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31.^[10] For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933.^[10] Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.^[10]

1920s

Frank Borzage won in the "Dramatic" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for Bad Girl.

1930s

Lewis Milestone won in the "Comedy" category at the first ceremony and later received a second award for All Quiet on the Western Front.

Frank Lloyd won two awards in this category for The Divine Lady and Cavalcade.

Frank Capra won three awards in this category, for It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and You Can't Take It with You.

John Ford has the most Best Director wins with four, winning in 1935, 1940, 1941, and 1952.

1940s

William Wyler has the most nominations with twelve, winning in 1942, 1946, and 1959.

Michael Curtiz won for directing Casablanca.

Billy Wilder (right) was nominated eight times, winning for The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Apartment (1960).

Elia Kazan won in 1947 for Gentleman's Agreement and again in 1954 for On the Waterfront.

John Huston received the award in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

1950s

Joseph L. Mankiewicz won back to back Oscars for, A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950)

George Stevens won for A Place in the Sun and Giant.

Fred Zinnemann won for From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons

David Lean won for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia

Vincent Minnelli won for Gigi in 1958

1960s

Robert Wise, co-won with Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), and solo for The Sound of Music (1965)

George Cukor won in 1964 for My Fair Lady

Mike Nichols won for 1967's The Graduate

1970s

William Friedkin won in 1971 for The French Connection.

Bob Fosse won for Cabaret in 1972

Francis Ford Coppola earned the award for The Godfather Part II.

Miloš Forman won for both 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and 1984's Amadeus.

Woody Allen received seven nominations in the category, winning for Annie Hall in 1977.

1980s

Robert Redford won for Ordinary People

Warren Beatty won in 1981 for directing Reds

Richard Attenborough won in 1982 for his epic biopic, Gandhi

Oliver Stone earned two awards in this category in the 1980s—one for Platoon (1986), and the other for Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Bernardo Bertolucci won for The Last Emperor (1987)

1990s

Jonathan Demme won for The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Clint Eastwood won for Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Steven Spielberg won for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998)

James Cameron won for Titanic (1997)

Sam Mendes won for his directorial debut, American Beauty (1999)

2000s

Peter Jackson won for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Ang Lee became the first Asian director to win for Brokeback Mountain (2005). He won again for Life of Pi (2012)

Martin Scorsese won once from nine nominations for The Departed in 2006.

Joel and Ethan Coen won for No Country for Old Men (2007).

Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win Best Director. She won for The Hurt Locker in 2009.

2010s

Alfonso Cuarón became the first Mexican director to win this award for Gravity (2013). He won again for Roma (2018).

Alejandro G. Iñárritu won in consecutive years for directing Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), the third director to accomplish this and the first since 1950.

Damien Chazelle became the youngest Best Director winner for La La Land (2016).

Guillermo del Toro won for The Shape of Water (2017).

Bong Joon-ho became the first South Korean winner for Parasite (2019)

2020s

Chloé Zhao became the second woman (and first one of color) to win the Best Director honor for Nomadland (2020).

Jane Campion became the third woman to win the Best Director honor for The Power of the Dog (2021).

Multiple wins and nominations

Age superlatives

Diversity of nominees/winners

Since its inception, there have been 467 nominations for the award and it has been given to 74 directors or directing teams. Six black directors have been nominated (John Singleton, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and Spike Lee) a total of six times in this category, and none have won the award.^[108] Seven female directors have been nominated (Jane Campion, Chloé Zhao, Emerald Fennell, Greta Gerwig, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola and Lina Wertmüller) a total of eight times in the category, and three have won the award.^[109] Nine Asian directors have been nominated (M. Night Shyamalan, Chloé Zhao, Lee Isaac Chung, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bong Joon-ho, Ang Lee, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Akira Kurosawa and Daniel Kwan) a total of eleven times in the category, with five wins total.^[110] Five Latin American directors have been nominated (Héctor Babenco, Fernando Meirelles, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro) a total of eight times in the category, with five wins total.^[111]

Records

• John Ford has received the most awards in this category with four.
• William Wyler was nominated on twelve occasions, more than any other individual, including a record four times in a row.
• Clarence Brown received the most nominations without a win with six.
• Damien Chazelle became the youngest director in history to receive this award, at the age of 32 for his work on La La Land.
• John Singleton became the youngest and first black director to be nominated for this award, at age 24 for his work on Boyz n the Hood.
• Three directing teams have shared the award; Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961, Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007, and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022.
• Only five times in Academy Award history have director-collaborators been nominated for award: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978), Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007) and True Grit (2010), and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).
• Only six times in Academy Award history did directors win the award for their feature film debut: Delbert Mann for Marty (1955), Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Robert Redford for Ordinary People (1980), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves and Sam Mendes for American Beauty (1999).
• Jerome Robbins is the only winner in this category that only directed one feature film his entire life.
• The Coen brothers are the only siblings to have won the award.^[112]
• Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to have won the award, for 2009's The Hurt Locker.
• Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Trilogy is the only director to be nominated for each film of a trilogy, winning one for the sequel.
• John Ford (1940-1941), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949-1950), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014-2015) are the only three directors to have won back-to-back for this category.
• Ang Lee is the first Asian director to have won the award. In 2012 he became the first Asian director to win twice.
• Alfonso Cuarón became the first Mexican director (and Latin American) to have won the award for Gravity. He won again for Roma.
• Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to have won the award for Nomadland.