National Film Award for Best Direction

The National Film Award for Best Direction is an honour presented annually at India's National Film Awards ceremony by the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), an organisation set up by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Since 1967, the award is given by a national panel appointed annually by the DFF to a director for their work within Indian cinema. It is presented by the president of India at a ceremony held in New Delhi.

The winner is given a "Swarna Kamal" (Golden Lotus) certificate and a cash prize of inr 250000. 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: Bengali (16 awards), Malayalam (14 awards), Hindi (11 awards), Tamil (4 awards), English, Kannada and Marathi (3 awards each), Assamese and Punjabi (1 each).

The first recipient was Satyajit Ray, who was honoured at the 15th National Film Awards for directing the Bengali film Chiriyakhana (1967). Ray is also the most frequent recipient, with six wins. Adoor Gopalakrishnan has won 5 awards, which includes his debut Malayalam film Swayamvaram (1972). Mrinal Sen has been awarded four times. He is also the only recipient to win the award for directing films in two different languages: Bengali and Hindi. At the 19th National Film Awards, Girish Karnad and B.V. Karanth shared the award for co-directing the Kannada film Vamsha Vriksha (1972). The most recent recipient is Sachidanandan K. R., who was honoured at the 68th National Film Awards for directing the Malayalam film Ayyappanum Koshiyum. The 69th National Film Awards were announced recently with Nikhil Mahajan winning the Best Director for his Marathi film, Godavari.

Multiple winners
6 wins : Satyajit Ray

5 wins : Adoor Gopalakrishnan

4 wins : Mrinal Sen

3 wins : G. Aravindan,

2 wins : Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Goutam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Jayaraj