The Academy Award for Best Directing (Best Director), usually known as the Best Director Oscar, is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to directors for a movie.

Nominations for Best Director are made by members in the academy's Directing branch. The award winners are selected by the academy membership as a whole.

Winners and nominees

1920s
In the first year only, the award was separated into Dramatic Direction and Comedy Direction.

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

International presence

As the Academy Awards are based in the United States and are centered on the Hollywood film industry, the majority of Academy Award winners have been Americans. Nonetheless, there is significant international presence at the awards, as evidenced by the following list of winners of the Academy Award for Best Director.
 Australia: Mel Gibson, Tom Hooper (Gibson, a U.S. citizen, moved with his family to Australia at the age of 12. Hooper, born in the U.K., is a dual citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom as his mother was born in Australia.)
 Austria: Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann (Both Wilder and Zinnemann moved to America in their twenties and became naturalized U.S. citizens.)
 Canada: James Cameron (Cameron was applying to become a U.S. citizen.)
 Czech Republic: Miloš Forman (naturalized U.S. citizen since 1977)
 France: Michel Hazanavicius
 Germany: William Wyler, Mike Nichols (After moving to America in 1921, Wyler became a naturalized U.S. citizen in his twenties. Wyler was born in Alsace which was part of the German Empire then, but now is part of France. Nichols' family moved from Germany when he was eight-years old, and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen five years later.)
 Italy: Bernardo Bertolucci
 New Zealand: Peter Jackson
 Poland: Roman Polanski (French citizenship)
 Taiwan: Ang Lee (naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in America since the early 1980s.)
 United Kingdom: Richard Attenborough, Danny Boyle, David Lean, Sam Mendes, Anthony Minghella, Carol Reed, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, and Tom Hooper

However, no director has won for a film that is entirely in a foreign language.

There have been 20 directors nominated for films entirely or significantly in a foreign (non-English) language.
 Federico Fellini (nominated for 4 films, which were all in Italian)
 Ingmar Bergman (nominated for 3 films, which were all in Swedish)
 Pietro Germi (Italian)
 Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japanese)
 Claude Lelouch (French)
 Gillo Pontecorvo (Italian-born director nominated for The Battle of Algiers, which was in French and Arabic)
 Costa Gavras (Greek-born director nominated for French-language film Z.)
 Jan Troell (Swedish)
 François Truffaut (French)
 Lina Wertmuller (Italian)
 Edouard Molinaro (French)
 Wolfgang Petersen (German)
 Akira Kurosawa (Japanese)
 Lasse Hallström (Swedish. He was also nominated for the English-language film The Cider House Rules.)
 Krzysztof Kieslowski (Polish-born director nominated for French-language film Three Colours: Red)
 Michael Radford (an English-born director nominated for the Italian-language film Il Postino.)
 Roberto Benigni (Italian)
 Ang Lee (Taiwanese-born director nominated for the Mandarin-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He would later win for the English-language film Brokeback Mountain.)
 Pedro Almodóvar (Spanish)
 Fernando Meirelles (Brazilian Portuguese)
 Clint Eastwood (an American director nominated for the Japanese-language film Letters from Iwo Jima, which has a few brief scenes in English).
 Julian Schnabel (an American director nominated for the French-language film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.)

Ironically, internationally known filmmakers Jean Renoir (for The Southerner), Michelangelo Antonioni (for Blowup) and Louis Malle (for Atlantic City) were nominated for films that were in English and not their native language.

Nominations for films primarily in English with some scenes (of a notable length) in a foreign language includes:
 Jules Dassin for Never on Sunday (Greek)
 Bernardo Bertolucci for Last Tango in Paris (French)
 Francis Coppola for The Godfather Part II (Italian) (Winner)
 Kevin Costner for Dances with Wolves (Lakota and Pawnee) (Winner)
 Steven Soderbergh for Traffic (Spanish) (Winner)
 Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel (Spanish, Arabic, French, Japanese, Japanese Sign Language, Berber)
 Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (Hindi) (Winner)
 Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (French, German and Italian)

Several international nominees (regardless of the language used in their respective films) include:
 Australia: Bruce Beresford, Scott Hicks, Chris Noonan and Peter Weir
 Austria: Otto Preminger, Josef von Sternberg
 Brazil: Héctor Babenco, Fernando Meirelles
 Canada: Atom Egoyan, Arthur Hiller, Norman Jewison and Jason Reitman
 Cyprus: Michael Cacoyannis
 France: Michel Hazanavicius, Claude Lelouch, Louis Malle and François Truffaut
 Germany: William Dieterle, Ernst Lubitsch and Wolfgang Petersen
 Greece: Costa Gavras
 India: M. Night Shyamalan
 Ireland: Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan and Kenneth Branagh
 Italy: Roberto Benigni, Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Gillo Pontecorvo, Lina Wertmüller, Franco Zeffirelli and Michelangelo Antonioni
 Japan: Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara
 Mexico: Alejandro González Iñárritu
 New Zealand: Jane Campion
 Poland: Krzysztof Kieślowski
 Spain: Pedro Almodóvar
 Sweden: Ingmar Bergman, Lasse Hallström and Jan Troell
 United Kingdom: Alfred Hitchcock, John Boorman, Peter Cattaneo, Charles Crichton, Stephen Daldry, Stephen Frears, Laurence Olivier, Paul Greengrass, Roland Joffé, Mike Leigh, Adrian Lyne, Hugh Hudson, Alan Parker and Ridley Scott

Related pages
 Golden Globe Award for Best Director
 BAFTA Award for Best Direction

References

Other websites
 Oscars.org (official Academy site)

Director