National Award Winning Directors of India

38 items • Updated 10/22/2025

The winner is given a "Swarna Kamal" (Golden Lotus) certificate and a cash prize of ₹2.5 lakh (US$3,500).Including ties and repeat winners, the DFF has presented a total of 53 Best Direction awards to 34 different directors.

Although Indian cinema produces films in more than twenty languages, the performances of films that have won awards are of nine languages:

1.Bengali (16 awards) 2.Malayalam (13 awards) 3.Hindi (11 awards) 4.Tamil (4 awards) 5.English and Kannada (3 awards each) 6.Marathi (3 awards) 7.Assamese and Punjabi (1 each)

1		Satyajit Ray Writer
2		Adoor Gopalakrishnan Director
3		Mrinal Sen Director
4	👤	G. Aravindan Costume Designer
5		Jayaraj Director
6		Goutam Ghose Director
7		Buddhadev Dasgupta Director
8		Rituparno Ghosh Writer
9		Aparna Sen Actress
10	👤	B.V. Karanth Composer
11		Girish Karnad Actor
12		Mani Kaul Director
13	👤	P. Lankesh Writer
14		Utpalendu Chakrabarty Director
15		Shaji N. Karun Cinematographer
16		Tapan Sinha Director
17	👤	T.V. Chandran Director
18		Jahnu Barua Director
19		Saeed Akhtar Mirza Director
20	👤	Agathiyan Actor
21		Shyam Benegal Director
22	👤	T. Rajeevnath Director
23	👤	B. Lenin Editor
24		Rahul Dholakia Director
25		Madhur Bhandarkar Director
26		Vetrimaaran Producer
27		Gurvinder Singh Director
28	👤	Shivaji Lotan Patil Director
29		Hansal Mehta Writer
30		Srijit Mukherji Director
31		Sanjay Leela Bhansali Producer
32	👤	Rajesh Mapuskar Producer
33		Aditya Dhar Writer
34	👤	Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan Writer
35		Sachy Writer
36		Nikhil Mahajan Writer
37		Sooraj R. Barjatya Producer
38		Sudipto Sen Director