Best Directors at Filmfare Awards

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The Filmfare Best Director Award is one of the Popular Award presented by the magazine Filmfare to the directors working in the Indian film Industry. It is a part of the magazine's annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films and was first presented in 1954 in the inaugral year.


Bimal Roy leads the winners with seven Best Director Filmfare awards, followed by Raj Kapoor and Yash Chopra, with four in kitty. Chopra has the most nominations, 12, followed by Roy with 7, and Raj Kapoor, Gulzar, Subhash Ghai and Mahesh Bhatt with 6 nominations each.

Sai Paranjpye is the only woman to have ever won the Best Director award. She won it for Sparsh in 1985. Paranjpye had earlier been nominated for Chashme Buddoor in 1982. Other women directors to have been nominated are Mira Nair for Salaam Bombay! in 1990 and Farah Khan for Main Hoon Na in 2005 and for Om Shanti Om in 2008.

Bimal Roy also has the distinction of winning the award thrice in a row, on two separate occasions (1954-1956 and 1959-1961). Mahesh Bhatt is the only other director to have been nominated thrice in a row (1984-1986). Also, no director has ever won if he/she has been nominated twice in the same year - Gulzar in 1974, Basu Chatterjee in 1977 and Hrishikesh Mukherjee in 1980.