The National Film Award for Best Direction is an honour presented annually at India's National Film Awards ceremony by the

Directorate of Film Festivals The Directorate of Film Festivals in India was an organisation that initiated and presented the International Film Festival of India, the National Film Awards and the Indian Panorama. Although the Directorate helped appoint members of the jur ...

(DFF), an organisation set up by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Since 1967, the award is given by a national panel appointed annually by the DFF to a director for their work within Indian cinema. It is presented by the

president of India The president of India ( IAST: ) is the head of state of the Republic of India. The president is the nominal head of the executive, the first citizen of the country, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. Droupadi Mur ...

at a ceremony held in New Delhi. The winner is given a "Swarna Kamal" (Golden Lotus) certificate and a cash prize of . Including ties and repeat winners, the DFF has presented a total of 53 Best Direction awards to 34 different directors. Although Indian cinema produces films in more than twenty languages, the performances of films that have won awards are of nine languages: Bengali (16 awards),

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam wa ...

(14 awards),

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of North India, northern, Central India, centr ...

(11 awards), Tamil (4 awards), English and

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

(3 awards each),

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

(2 awards),

Assamese Assamese may refer to: * Assamese people, a socio-ethnolinguistic identity of north-eastern India * People of Assam, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious people of Assam * Assamese language, one of the easternmost Indo-Aryan language ...

and

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

(1 each). The first recipient was

Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs o ...

, who was honoured at the

15th National Film Awards The 15th National Film Awards, presented by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India to felicitate the best of Indian Cinema released in 1967. Ceremony took place at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on 25 November 1968 and awards were given by ...

for directing the Bengali film '' Chiriyakhana'' (1967). Ray is also the most frequent recipient, with six wins. Adoor Gopalakrishnan has won 5 awards, which includes his debut Malayalam film '' Swayamvaram'' (1972). Mrinal Sen has been awarded four times. He is also the only recipient to win the award for directing films in two different languages: Bengali and Hindi. At the 19th National Film Awards,

Girish Karnad Girish Karnad (19 May 1938 – 10 June 2019) was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the ...

and B.V. Karanth shared the award for co-directing the Kannada film '' Vamsha Vriksha'' (1972). The most recent recipient is Sachidanandan K. R., who was honoured at the 68th National Film Awards for directing the Malayalam film ''

Ayyappanum Koshiyum ''Ayyappanum Koshiyum'' () is a 2020 Indian Malayalam-language action thriller film written and directed by Sachy. Produced by Ranjith and P. M. Sasidharan, the film stars Biju Menon and Prithviraj Sukumaran. ''Ayyappanum Koshiyum'' was rel ...

''.

Winners

Footnotes

References

External links

Official Page for Directorate of Film Festivals, India
{{featured list Direction Awards for best director