Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Director

The Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Director is an annual award given by the Detroit Film Critics Society to honor the best director of that year.

Winners

  indicates the winners.

2000s

Year	Director(s)	Film
2007 [1]	Joel and Ethan Coen	No Country for Old Men
	Paul Thomas Anderson	There Will Be Blood
	Tim Burton	Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
	Sean Penn	Into the Wild
	Jason Reitman	Juno
	Julian Schnabel	Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
2008 [2]	Danny Boyle	Slumdog Millionaire
	Darren Aronofsky	The Wrestler
	Ron Howard	Frost/Nixon
	Christopher Nolan	The Dark Knight
	Andrew Stanton	WALL-E
2009 [3]	Pete Docter	Up[4]
	Kathryn Bigelow	The Hurt Locker
	Jason Reitman	Up in the Air
	Quentin Tarantino	Inglourious Basterds
	Marc Webb	(500) Days of Summer

2010s

Year	Director(s)	Film
2010 [5]	Danny Boyle	127 Hours[6]
	David Fincher	The Social Network
	Debra Granik	Winter's Bone
	Tom Hooper	The King's Speech
	Christopher Nolan	Inception
	Edgar Wright	Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
2011 [7]	Michel Hazanavicius	The Artist
	Terrence Malick	The Tree of Life
	Jeff Nichols	Take Shelter
	Martin Scorsese	Hugo
	Nicolas Winding Refn	Drive
2012 [8]	David O. Russell	Silver Linings Playbook
	Ben Affleck	Argo
	Juan Antonio Bayona	The Impossible
	Kathryn Bigelow	Zero Dark Thirty
	Sarah Polley	Take This Waltz
2013 [9]	Alfonso Cuarón	Gravity[10]
	David O. Russell	American Hustle
	Martin Scorsese	The Wolf of Wall Street
	Paul Greengrass	Captain Phillips
	Spike Jonze	Her
2014 [11]	Richard Linklater	Boyhood[12]
	Wes Anderson	The Grand Budapest Hotel
	Damien Chazelle	Whiplash
	Jonathan Glazer	Under the Skin
	Alejandro González Iñárritu	Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
2015 [13]	George Miller	Mad Max: Fury Road
	John Crowley	Brooklyn
	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	The Revenant
	Tom McCarthy	Spotlight
	Paolo Sorrentino	Youth
2016 [14]	Damien Chazelle	La La Land
	Barry Jenkins	Moonlight
	Kenneth Lonergan	Manchester by the Sea
	David Mackenzie	Hell or High Water
	Denzel Washington	Fences
2017 [15]	Sean Baker	The Florida Project[16]
	Paul Thomas Anderson	Phantom Thread
	Guillermo del Toro	The Shape of Water
	Greta Gerwig	Lady Bird
	Christopher Nolan	Dunkirk
	Jordan Peele	Get Out
2018 [17]	Adam McKay	Vice
	Bo Burnham	Eighth Grade
	Bradley Cooper	A Star is Born
	Alfonso Cuarón	Roma
	Paul Schrader	First Reformed
2019 [18]	Martin Scorsese	The Irishman
	Noah Baumbach	Marriage Story
	Bong Joon-ho	Parasite
	Quentin Tarantino	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
	Taika Waititi	Jojo Rabbit

2020s

Year	Director(s)	Film
2020 [19]	Chloé Zhao	Nomadland
	Lee Isaac Chung	Minari
	Regina King	One Night in Miami...
	Aaron Sorkin	The Trial of the Chicago 7
	Spike Lee	Da 5 Bloods
2021 [20]	Lin-Manuel Miranda	tick, tick…BOOM!
	Sean Baker	Red Rocket
	Kenneth Branagh	Belfast
	David Lowery	The Green Knight
	Adam McKay	Don't Look Up

See also

• Michigan portal
• Film portal

• Academy Award for Best Director