page_title: Academy Award for Best Director
section_title: Winners and nominees
hierarchical_section_title: Academy Award for Best Director / Winners and nominees
caption_attribution_description: Català: Guillermo del Toro, fotografiat durant el Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya (Sitges, 2017) English: Guillermo del Toro, photographed during the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya (Sitges, 2017)
context_page_description: The Academy Award for Best Director is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry.
  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.
context_section_description: 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. 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.
caption: Guillermo del Toro won this award for directing The Shape of Water (2017).
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