Oscar Best Directors Quiz

Can you name the winners of the Academy Award for Best Director?

Year = year of the ceremony honoring the previous year's films

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Last updated: March 10, 2024

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First submitted	February 28, 2012
Times taken	45,921
Average score	30.1%
Rating	4.56

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Year	Movie	Director
2024	Oppenheimer	Christopher Nolan
2023	Everything Everywhere All at Once	Daniel Kwan / Daniel Scheinert
2022	The Power of the Dog	Jane Campion
2021	Nomadland	Chloé Zhao
2020	Parasite	Bong Joon-ho
2019	Roma	Alfonso Cuarón
2018	The Shape of Water	Guillermo del Toro
2017	La La Land	Damien Chazelle
2016	The Revenant	Alejandro González Iñárritu
2015	Birdman	Alejandro González Iñárritu
2014	Gravity	Alfonso Cuarón
2013	Life of Pi	Ang Lee
2012	The Artist	Michel Hazanavicius
2011	The King's Speech	Tom Hooper
2010	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow
2009	Slumdog Millionaire	Danny Boyle
2008	No Country for Old Men	Ethan Coen / Joel Coen
2007	The Departed	Martin Scorsese
2006	Brokeback Mountain	Ang Lee
2005	Million Dollar Baby	Clint Eastwood
2004	The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King	Peter Jackson
2003	The Pianist	Roman Polanski
2002	A Beautiful Mind	Ron Howard
2001	Traffic	Steven Soderbergh
2000	American Beauty	Sam Mendes
1999	Saving Private Ryan	Steven Spielberg
1998	Titanic	James Cameron
1997	The English Patient	Anthony Minghella
1996	Braveheart	Mel Gibson
1995	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis
1994	Schindler's List	Steven Spielberg
1993	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood
1992	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme
1991	Dances with Wolves	Kevin Costner
1990	Born on the Fourth of July	Oliver Stone
1989	Rain Man	Barry Levinson
1988	The Last Emperor	Bernardo Bertolucci
1987	Platoon	Oliver Stone
1986	Out of Africa	Sydney Pollack
1985	Amadeus	Milos Forman
1984	Terms of Endearment	James L. Brooks
1983	Gandhi	Richard Attenborough
1982	Reds	Warren Beatty
1981	Ordinary People	Robert Redford
1980	Kramer vs. Kramer	Robert Benton
1979	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino
1978	Annie Hall	Woody Allen
1977	Rocky	John G. Avildsen
1976	One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest	Milos Forman

Year	Movie	Director
1975	The Godfather Part II	Francis Ford Coppola
1974	The Sting	George Roy Hill
1973	Cabaret	Bob Fosse
1972	The French Connection	William Friedkin
1971	Patton	Franklin J. Schaffner
1970	Midnight Cowboy	John Schlesinger
1969	Oliver!	Carol Reed
1968	The Graduate	Mike Nichols
1967	A Man for All Seasons	Fred Zinnemann
1966	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise
1965	My Fair Lady	George Cukor
1964	Tom Jones	Tony Richardson
1963	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean
1962	West Side Story	Robert Wise
1962	West Side Story	Jerome Robbins
1961	The Apartment	Billy Wilder
1960	Ben-Hur	William Wyler
1959	Gigi	Vincente Minnelli
1958	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean
1957	Giant	George Stevens
1956	Marty	Delbert Mann
1955	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan
1954	From Here to Eternity	Fred Zinnemann
1953	The Quiet Man	John Ford
1952	A Place in the Sun	George Stevens
1951	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1950	A Letter to Three Wives	Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1949	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston
1948	Gentleman's Agreement	Elia Kazan
1947	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler
1946	The Lost Weekend	Billy Wilder
1945	Going My Way	Leo McCarey
1944	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz
1943	Mrs. Miniver	William Wyler
1942	How Green Was My Valley	John Ford
1941	The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford
1940	Gone with the Wind	Victor Fleming
1939	You Can't Take It with You	Frank Capra
1938	The Awful Truth	Leo McCarey
1937	Mr. Deeds Goes to Town	Frank Capra
1936	The Informer	John Ford
1935	It Happened One Night	Frank Capra
1934	Cavalcade	Frank Lloyd
1933	Bad Girl	Frank Borzage
1932	Skippy	Norman Taurog
1931	All Quiet on the Western Front	Lewis Milestone
1930	The Divine Lady	Frank Lloyd
1929	Two Arabian Knights	Lewis Milestone
1929	Seventh Heaven	Frank Borzage

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32 Comments

Level 26

Apr 4, 2012

can you robert wise for westside story?

Level 57

Apr 24, 2012

Great quiz! 61 first try.

Level 24

Jun 10, 2012

got them all down to Robert Redford for Ordinary People, and I got 43/65.

Level 27

Mar 3, 2013

Hm, I didn't know that James L. Brooks is famous for something else than the Simpsons.

Level 51

Dec 27, 2017

Brooks was one of the most influential people in the entertainment industry before The Simpsons even began. Aside from his Oscar-winning movie 'Terms of Endearment', he created such television hits as 'Taxi' and 'Mary Tyler Moore'.

Level 74

Feb 23, 2015

I thought I was a movie buff but I only scored 18. So many of the names just wouldn't come and others I had no chance of spelling correctly. Still mad at self for not getting Curtiz. Casablanca is my favorite movie even if it was just another run of the mill flick at the time it was filmed. They managed to make the magic happen by the end of the process.

Level ∞

Mar 4, 2018

Stanley Kubrick never won!

Level 72

May 31, 2018

Neither did Howard Hawks until he was given a lifetime achievement award and Mr. DeMille never won for directing. To the diversity issue, if you look at the whole list there are winning directors from all over the world. If I remember correctly there is even one from Moldova.

Level 74

Sep 20, 2018

If you want to know what BS the award shows are, just look at who HASN'T won. It's only as their careers are ending that the Academy realizes they royally screwed up and didn't give the actual greats (not the one offs or politically correct) the award and hand out the lifetime achievement award. Personally, I would tell them where to shove the lifetime award -- it's a consolation prize.

Level 67

Mar 4, 2019

Which director won for "politically correct" reasons? I can't wait to hear this.

Level 78

May 2, 2018

Not much diversity with all those Mexicans winning lately.

Level 78

Feb 25, 2019

Again! Although I must say Cuarón is a fine winner.

Level 91

Feb 25, 2019

Having seen all those movies, I’d say those wins are all well deserved. But I’ve seen better from del Toro.

Level 78

Feb 26, 2019

Yeah, The Shape of Water is the kind of movie that awkwardly references or bluntly mentions old movies so the Academy reads it as a love letter to cinema. And while the movie redeems the old monster as a misunderstood foreign creature, it still needs a dramatic 'monster'. I don't like it when movies give you that purely evil, one-dimensional, irredeemable villain which everyone in the audience can hate without restrictions.

Level 78

Feb 26, 2019

All of the "Mexican" winner films are crafted with highest skill obviously, but in the case of Roma I think the craft serves the most interesting purpose.

Level 56

Feb 25, 2019

Well I guess if you want to know which director is going to win next year, just look out for a well-known movie with a mexican director.

Level 93

Feb 11, 2020

Not necessarily Mexican, but definitely foreign!

Level 89

Feb 10, 2020

Interesting that 9 of the last 10 winners have not been American.

Level 89

Mar 31, 2022

2 years later and it's 11 of the last 12. Quite unusual.

Level 93

Feb 11, 2020

BONG HIVE!!!!!

Level 72

Mar 27, 2020

People are good at this, I am not, I only recognize 10 and I didnt even get all of them!

(well the coen brothers I sort of recognise. would never come up with them (did try wachowski) but if you asked who they were, I would ve gotten director) . But seeing it written, to me that would be pronounced coon and I think the few times I have heard it, it was pronounced co-an or cohen

Level 78

Apr 3, 2020

Dutch pronunciation?

Level 93

Apr 26, 2021

Congratulations to Chloe Zhao, the first woman of color to win Best Director!

Level 82

Apr 28, 2021

Wow! People actually remember directors. Not me--I got five.

Level 90

Apr 29, 2021

Funny how the biggest people in the movie business with the longest staying power are anonymous to the public while some actor who was on a TV show 40 years ago gets pestered every time he eats in public by people who want to be near someone famous.

Level 81

Feb 15, 2022

Shame what a washed-up fruitcake Oliver Stone has become.

Level 91

Mar 30, 2022

Ain't that the truth. I enjoyed watching his films from the late 80s (Platoon, Wall Street, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July), and even though JFK is ridiculous I still found it somewhat entertaining. But then everything he did post-JFK (of the ones I've seen) I ended up hating. Natural Born Killers, Any Given Sunday, Alexander, World Trade Center, W., the Wall Street sequel, I didn't like any of them. And it's not just me, take a look at his filmography and look at how the number of awards and nominations continually decreases as you go further down the list.

Level 74

Mar 19, 2024

Quentin Tarantino did not have warm feelings for Oliver Stone after Stone rewrote Tarantino's original screenplay for NBK--so much that Tarantino demanded that his name be taken off the movie. So when someone asked Tarantino about working with Stone he said (if I recall correctly) "The problem with Stone is that he reduces everything to two words. Take 'Platoon'--'war is bad!' No, that's three words--Stone would say 'war bad.'"

My sentiments exactly. I agreed with the politics behind the movie "Salvador," but still hated the movie because it felt that it had to deliver every point with a sledgehammer.

Level 93

Mar 21, 2024

That's my biggest issue with Adam McKay's movies honestly. He often has good points but delivers them with the subtlety of a nuclear warhead.

Level 93

Jan 12, 2024

Placing my bets that Christopher Nolan will be the next name on this list!

Level 92

Mar 11, 2024

Good bet.

Level 74

Mar 19, 2024

Concerning Interesting Quote #61 that came with this quiz: that's not how you spell Confucius (or at least not the standard English transliteration of 孔子).

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