Academy Award for Best Directing

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. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies. 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.

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. 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.

Since its inception, the award has been given to 74 directors or directing teams. As of the 2021 ceremony, New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion is the most recent winner in this category for her work on '' The Power of the Dog'' and the third woman to win it.

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. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31. Levy 2003, page 52 For the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

Multiple wins

Four or more nominations

Age superlatives

Diversity of nominees/winners

Six black directors have been nominated a total of six times in this category, and none have won the award. Seven female directors have been nominated a total of eight times in the category, and three have won the award. Eight Asian directors have been nominated a total of ten times in the category, with four wins total. Five Latin American directors have been nominated a total of seven times in the category, with five wins total.

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.
* 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''.
* Two directing teams have shared the award; Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for '' West Side Story'' in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for '' No Country for Old Men'' in 2007.
* Only four 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), and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for ''No Country for Old Men'' (2007). (Wise/Robbins and the Coens actually won the award). In 2011, the Coens were again nominated for a best directing-duo, for their Western '' True Grit'' (2010).
* The Coen brothers are the only siblings to have won the award.
* 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.

Notes

See also

* BAFTA Award for Best Direction
* Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Director
* Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film
* Golden Globe Award for Best Director
* Independent Spirit Award for Best Director

References

Bibliography

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External links

Oscars.org
(official Academy site)


(official site)

Oscar.com
(official ceremony promotional site)

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Awards for best director