List of films for which the directors were awarded the Best Director Award by the Indian government's Directorate of Film Festivals for this film.

v t e National Film Award for Best Direction
1967–1980	Satyajit Ray (1967) Satyajit Ray (1968) Mrinal Sen (1969) Satyajit Ray (1970) Girish Karnad and B. V. Karanth (1971) Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1972) Mani Kaul (1973) Satyajit Ray (1974) Satyajit Ray (1975) P. Lankesh (1976) G. Aravindan (1977) G. Aravindan (1978) Mrinal Sen (1979) Mrinal Sen (1980)
1981–2000	Aparna Sen (1981) Utpalendu Chakrabarty (1982) Mrinal Sen (1983) Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1984) Shyam Benegal (1985) G. Aravindan (1986) Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1987) Shaji N. Karun (1988) Adoor Gopalakrishnan (1989) Tapan Sinha (1990) Satyajit Ray (1991) Goutam Ghose (1992) T. V. Chandran (1993) Jahnu Barua (1994) Saeed Akhtar Mirza (1995) Agathiyan (1996) Jayaraj (1997) Rajeevnath (1998) Buddhadeb Dasgupta (1999) Rituparno Ghosh (2000)
2001–present	B. Lenin (2001) Aparna Sen (2002) Goutam Ghose (2003) Buddhadeb Dasgupta (2004) Rahul Dholakia (2005) Madhur Bhandarkar (2006) Adoor Gopalakrishnan (2007) Bala (2008) Rituparno Ghosh (2009) Vetrimaaran (2010) Gurvinder Singh (2011) Shivaji Lotan Patil (2012) Hansal Mehta (2013) Srijit Mukherji (2014) Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2015) Rajesh Mapuskar (2016) Jayaraj (2017) Aditya Dhar (2018) Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan (2019) Sachy (2020)