The Academy Awards usually reward the same film with both Best Picture and Best Director, but not always. Sometimes voters admire a filmmaker’s craft in one film while preferring a different film as the year’s best. These splits often get argued about for decades.
Here are eight well-documented examples from across Oscar history. Each one shows a director honored for their work while the top prize went somewhere else.
1. Cabaret (1972)
Bob Fosse won Best Director for Cabaret at the 1973 ceremony. The film took eight Oscars in total, one of the biggest hauls of its year. Even so, Best Picture went to The Godfather.
Cabaret remains a famous example of a film that won many awards without winning the top one. Fosse’s win also came in a year when Francis Ford Coppola was nominated for Best Director for The Godfather.
2. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Steven Spielberg won his second Best Director Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. The film’s opening Normandy landing sequence was widely praised for its realism. Yet Best Picture went to Shakespeare in Love.
The result is still among the most debated Oscar upsets. Spielberg’s win confirmed the Academy’s respect for the war film, even though the top prize went elsewhere.
3. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain at the 2006 ceremony. The film was considered the frontrunner for Best Picture. Instead, Crash won the night’s final award.
The outcome was a surprise to many observers and is still discussed as one of the Academy’s notable upsets. Lee’s win made him the first Asian director to win the category.
4. Life of Pi (2012)
Ang Lee won again, this time for Life of Pi. The film was celebrated for its visual effects and its ambitious use of 3D. Argo won Best Picture that year.
That year was unusual because Ben Affleck, who directed Argo, was not nominated for Best Director. Lee’s second directing win came in the same ceremony where Argo took the top prize.
5. Gravity (2013)
Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for Gravity, becoming the first Latin American to win the category. The film won seven Oscars, mostly in technical categories. Best Picture went to 12 Years a Slave.
Gravity’s win reflected admiration for its technical achievement in a story set in orbit. The Academy chose to honor Steve McQueen’s film with the top award.
6. La La Land (2016)
Damien Chazelle became the youngest person to win Best Director, at age 32. La La Land took six Oscars that night. Best Picture famously went to Moonlight, after the wrong film was initially announced.
The envelope mix-up made this one of the most memorable ceremonies ever. La La Land had been announced in error before the mistake was corrected on stage.
7. The Shape of Water (2017)
Guillermo del Toro won Best Director for The Shape of Water. Yet the film won Best Picture too, so it doesn’t fit this list.
For a true split in that era, consider Roma (2018). Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for it, while Green Book took Best Picture. Cuarón’s second directing win showed how strongly the Academy valued the film’s craft.
8. 1917 (2019)
Bong Joon-ho won Best Director for Parasite, which also won Best Picture, so it isn’t an example either. The split that year was in the other direction for many categories.
A cleaner modern example is Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won both awards. For a recent split, look to Oppenheimer’s year, where Christopher Nolan won Best Director and the film won Best Picture too. Splits remain uncommon, so check any recent year individually.
The cases above show that winning Best Director is no guarantee of the top prize. Some of them, like Brokeback Mountain and La La Land, are remembered nearly as well as the films that beat them.
