Best Director
This list focuses on French-born directors.
| Year | Winner | Title | Status | Milestone/Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1945 | Jean Renoir | Southerner, TheThe Southerner | Nominated | |
| 1966 | Claude Lelouch | Man and a Woman, AA Man and a Woman | Nominated | |
| 1974 | Roman Polanski | Chinatown | Nominated | Polanski is a French-born Polish director. |
| François Truffaut | Day for Night | Nominated | ||
| 1979 | Edouard Molinaro | Cage aux Folles, LaLa Cage aux Folles | Nominated | |
| 1980 | Roman Polanski | Tess | Nominated | |
| 1981 | Louis Malle | Atlantic City | Nominated | |
| 1990 | Barbet Schroeder | Reversal of Fortune | Nominated | Schroeder is an Iranian-born French director. |
| 2002 | Roman Polanski | Pianist, TheThe Pianist | Won | |
| 2011 | Michel Hazanavicius | Artist, TheThe Artist | Won |
Read more about this topic: List Of French Academy Award Winners And Nominees
Famous quotes containing the word director:
“The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)