The Filmfare Best Director Award is one of the main awards presented given by the annual Filmfare Awards to recognise directors working in Hindi cinema. It was first presented in 1954 in the inaugural year.
Bimal Roy has the record of winning most awards (7) and the distinction of winning the award thrice in a row, on 2 separate occasions (1954–1956 and 1959–1961). He also won the award whenever he was nominated (7/7). Sanjay Leela Bhansali has received the award 5 times, Yash Chopra and Raj Kapoor has received the award 4 times each.
Rajkumar Santoshi remains the only director to have won the award for his first two films – for Ghayal in 1991 and for Damini in 1994.
Nitesh Tiwari and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari are the only married couple to win the award. Additionally, they won the award in consecutive years – the former won the award for Dangal in 2017 and the latter won the award for Bareilly Ki Barfi in 2018.
Only once have two siblings been nominated in the same year; Zoya Akhtar for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Farhan Akhtar for Don 2 in 2012, with Zoya winning the category.
Multiple nominations
The following Directors have received multiple Best Director nominations. The list is sorted by the number of total awards (with the number of total nominations listed in parentheses).
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.