The National Film Award for Best Debut Film of a Director is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Golden Lotus (Swarna Kamal).
The award was instituted in 1980, at 28th National Film Awards and has been awarded annually for films produced in the year across the country, in all Indian languages; Hindi (12 awards), Bengali and Malayalam (9 awards each), Tamil (5 awards), Marathi (4 awards), Assamese, English and Telugu (2 awards each), Haryanvi, Jasari, Karbi and Ladakhi (1 award each).
The award includes 'Golden Lotus Award' (Swarna Kamal) and cash prize. Until 69th edition, the award was given to director and producer. The name was shortened to Best Debut Film of a Director since 70th National Film Awards, and the director alone is awarded. The prize money was increased to 3,00,000.
Winners
Indicates a joint award for that year
1980–2021 List of award films, showing the year (award ceremony), language(s), producer(s) and director(s) Year Film(s) Language(s) Producer(s) Director(s) 1980 Maina Tadanta Bengali Utpalendu Chakrabarty 1981 Aadharshila Hindi Ashok Ahuja Ashok Ahuja 1982 Kann Sivanthaal Mann Sivakkum Tamil R. Venkat Raman Sreedhar Rajan 1983 Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro Hindi NFDC Kundan Shah 1984 Meendum Oru Kaathal Kathai Tamil Radhika Pothan Prathap K. Pothan 1985 New Delhi Times Hindi P. K. Tiwari Romesh Sharma 1986 Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin Hindi Sudhir Mishra Sudhir Mishra 1987 Ekti Jiban Bengali Chalchitra Raja Mitra 1988 Trishagni Hindi Nabendu Ghosh Nabendu Ghosh 1989 Wosobipo Karbi Karbi Anglong District Council Gautam Bora 1990 Perumthachan Malayalam G. Jayakumar Ajayan 1991 Haladhar Assamese Geeti Barua and Dwijen Hazorika Sanjeev Hazorika 1992 Miss Beatty's Children English NFDC, Doordarshan and Rooks AV Pamela Rooks 1993 Sunya Theke Suru Bengali H. Das, Madhumanti Maitra and M. Das Ashoke Viswanathan 1994 Mogamul Tamil J. Dharmambal Gnana Rajasekaran 1995 Kahini Bengali Chandramala Bhattacharya and Malaya Bhattacharya Malaya Bhattacharya 1996 Rag Birag Assamese Bhabhen Baruah and Khanin Baruah Bidyut Chakraborty 1997 Bhoothakkannadi Malayalam Nair Krishnakumar Unni A. K. Lohithadas 1998 Daya Malayalam C. K. Gopinath Venu 1999 Dollar Dreams English Sekhar Kammula Sekhar Kammula Laado Haryanvi Kumud Chaudhary Ashwini Chaudhary 2000 Sayahnam Malayalam M. S. Nazeer R. Sarath 2001 Thilaadanam Telugu NFDC K. N. T. Sastry 2002 Patalghar Bengali Niti Sonee Gourisaria Abhijit Chaudhuri Prohor Bengali Debjani Gupta Subhadro Chaudhary 2003 Margam Malayalam Rajiv Vijay Raghavan Rajiv Vijay Raghavan 2004 Grahanam Telugu N. Anji Reddy Mohan Krishna Indraganti 2005 Parineeta Hindi Vidhu Vinod Chopra Pradeep Sarkar 2006 Eakantham Malayalam Anthony Joseph Madhu Kaithapram Kabul Express Hindi Aditya Chopra Kabir Khan 2007 Frozen Hindi / Ladakhi Shivajee Chandrabhushan Shivajee Chandrabhushan 2008 A Wednesday! Hindi UTV Motion Pictures Neeraj Pandey 2009 Lahore Hindi Vivek Khatkar Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan 2010 Baboo Band Baaja Marathi Nita Jadhav Rajesh Pinjani 2011 Aaranya Kaandam Tamil S. P. Charan Thiagarajan Kumararaja 2012 Chittagong Hindi Bedabrata Pain Bedabrata Pain 101 Chodyangal Malayalam Thomas Kottackkakom Sidhartha Siva 2013 Fandry Marathi Navalkha Arts and Holy Basil Combine Nagraj Manjule 2014 Asha Jaoar Majhe Bengali For Films and Salaam Cinema Aditya Vikram Sengupta 2015 Masaan Hindi Phantom Films Neeraj Ghaywan 2016 Alifa Bengali Amaan Ahmed Deep Choudhury 2017 Sinjar Jasari Shibu G. Suseelan Pampally 2018 Naal Marathi Nagraj Manjule Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti 2019 Helen Malayalam Vineeth Sreenivasan Mathukutty Xavier 2020 Mandela Tamil S. Sashikanth Madonne Ashwin 2021 Meppadiyan Malayalam Unni Mukundan Films Vishnu Mohan
2022–present Since the 70th National Film Awards, director alone is awarded. List of award films, showing the year (award ceremony), language(s), and director(s) Year Film(s) Language(s) Director(s) 2022 Fouja Haryanvi Pramod Kumar 2023 Aatmapamphlet Marathi Ashish Avinash Bende2024 Swatantrya Veer Savarkar Hindi Randeep Hooda
References
External links Official Page for Directorate of Film Festivals, India National Film Awards Archives National Film Awards at IMDb