Filmfare Award for Best Director


The Filmfare Best Director Award is one of the main awards presented given by the annual Filmfare Awards to recognise directors working in the Hindi film Industry. It was first presented in 1954 in the inaugural year.

Superlatives

CategoryNameSuperlativeYearNotes
Most AwardsBimal Roy7 awards1954–1964Awards resulted from 7 nominations
Most NominationsYash Chopra12 nominations1966–2005Nominations resulted in 4 awards
Most Nominations without a WinMahesh Bhatt6 nominations1984–1994–

Bimal Roy has the record of winning most Awards 7 and distinction of winning the Award thrice in a row, on two separate occasions. He won the Award whenever he was nominated. Yash Chopra, Raj Kapoor and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have received the Award four times each. Yash Chopra received 12 nominations, while Raj Kapoor and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have received 6 nominations each. Mahesh Bhatt was nominated thrice in a row. However, he hasn't received any Award even after receiving 6 nominations. Also, no Director has ever won if one has been nominated twice in the same year – Gulzar in 1974, Basu Chatterjee in 1977 and Hrishikesh Mukherjee in 1980.
Sai Paranjpye was the first of four women to have won this award, the second being Zoya Akhtar, the third being Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, and the fourth being Meghna Gulzar. Sai Paranjpye won it for Sparsh in 1985. Paranjpye had earlier been nominated for Chashme Buddoor in 1982. Zoya Akhtar won it for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara in 2012. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari won it for Bareilly Ki Barfi in 2018. And Meghna Gulzar won it in for Raazi in 2019, after previously being nominated in 2016 for Talvar. Akhtar won the award again for Gully Boy in 2020, thus becoming the only woman to win the award twice. Other women Directors to have been nominated are Mira Nair for Salaam Bombay! in 1990, Farah Khan for Main Hoon Na in 2005 and for Om Shanti Om in 2008, and Gauri Shinde for English Vinglish.
Rajkumar Santoshi remains the only Director to have won the Award for his first two films, Ghayal and Damini
Nitesh Tiwari and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari are the only married couple to win the award. Nitesh Tiwari won the award for Dangal in 2017 and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari won the award for Bareilly Ki Barfi in 2018.
Only once have two siblings been nominated in the same year; Zoya Akhtar and Farhan Akhtar in 2012.

Multiple nominations

The following Directors have received multiple Best Director nominations. The list is sorted by the number of total awards.
In the list below, the winner of the award for each year is shown first, followed by the other nominees. The films are listed by the years when the award was presented. The announcing of nominations became regular after 1959.

1950s