Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Documentaries

Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries has been awarded since 1991.

Winners and nominees

1990s

• 1991: Barbara Kopple - American Dream
  • Alan Raymond - Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House
  • Albert Maysles - Soldiers of Music: Rostorpovitch Returns to Russia
  • Eleanor Coppola - Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
• 1992: Joseph A. Berlinger and Bruce J. Sinofsky - Brother's Keeper
  • Mark Stouffer - Braving Alaska
  • Ric Burns - The Donner Party
• 1993: Barbara Kopple - Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson
  • Susan Steinberg - Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time
  • Susan Raymond - I am a Promise
  • Bruce Kuerten - From Fields of Promise
  • Shari Cookson - Skinheads Usa: Soldiers in the Race War
• 1994: Steve James - Hoop Dreams
  • Bethany Yarrow - Mama Awethu!
  • Susan Todd & Andrew Young - Lives in Hazard
  • Jyll Johnstone - Martha & Ethel
  • Dan Geller & Dayna Goldfine - Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm
• 1995: Terry Zwigoff - Crumb
  • Deborah Hoffmann - Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter
  • Freida Mock - Maya Lin: A Strong Clear
  • Bill Van Daalen - Indianapolis: Ship of Doom
  • Helen Whitney - Richard Avedon: Darkness & Light
• 1996: Al Pacino - Looking for Richard
  • Leon Gast - When We Were Kings
  • Jeanne Jordan - Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern
  • Isaac Mizrahi - Slaughter, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
  • Bruce Sinofsky And Joseph Berlinger - Paradise Lost
• 1997: Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell - Riding the Rails
  • Ellen Hovde - Liberty! The American Revolution: "Blows Must Decide"
  • John O'Hagan - Wonderland
  • Michele Ohayon - Colors Straight Up
  • Peter Rosen - First Person Singular: I.M. Pei
• 1998: Jerry Blumenthal, Peter Gilbert and Gordon Quinn - Vietnam, Long Time Coming
  • Matthew Diamond - Dancemaker
  • Susan Lacy - Leonard Bernstein, Reaching for the Note
  • Nigel Noble - Porgy and Bess: An American Voice
  • Kyra Thompson - Dying to Tell the Story
• 1999: Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen - On the Ropes
  • Barry Blaustein - Beyond the Mat
  • Marc Levin - Thug Life In DC
  • Errol Morris - Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
  • Gary Weimberg - The Double Life Of Ernesto Gomez

2000s

• 2000: Chuck Braverman - High School Boot Camp
  • Laurie Collyer - Nuyorican Dream
  • David DeVries - The True Story Of The Bridge On The River Kwai
  • Mark Lewis - The Natural History Of The Chicken
  • Michael Mierendorf - Broken Child
• 2001: Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim - Startup.com
  • Charles Braverman - Rocky and Rolanda
  • Stephen Ives - Amato: A Love Affair with Opera
  • Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid - Long Night's Journey Into Day
  • Martin J. Spinelli - Long Night's Journey Into Day
• 2002: Tasha Oldham - The Smith Family
  • Charles Braverman - Bottom of the Ninth
  • Rebecca Cammisa and Rob Fruchtman - Sister Helen
  • Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender - Prisoner of Paradise
  • Leah Mahan - Sweet Old Song, P.O.V
• 2003: Nathaniel Kahn - My Architect
  • Sam Green and Bill Siegel - The Weather Underground
  • Andrew Jarecki - Capturing the Friedmans
  • Errol Morris - The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
  • José Padilha - Ônibus 174
• 2004: Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni - Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (The Story of the Weeping Camel)
  • Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman - Born into Brothels
  • Ross McElwee - Bright Leaves
  • Michael Moore - Fahrenheit 9/11
  • Jehane Noujaim - Control Room
• 2005: Werner Herzog - Grizzly Man
  • Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani - The Devil's Miner
  • Sean McAllister - The Liberace of Baghdad
  • Rupert Murray - Unknown White Male
  • Brent and Craig Renaud - Off to War
• 2006: Arūnas Matelis - Before Flying Back to the Earth
  • Amy Berg - Deliver Us From Evil
  • Michael Glawogger - Workingman's Death
  • James Longley - Iraq In Fragments
  • Jean-Henri Meunier - Ici Najac, A Vous La Terre
• 2007: Asger Leth - Ghosts of Cité Soleil
  • Ken Burns and Lynn Novick - The War
  • Alex Gibney - Taxi to the Dark Side
  • Richard Robbins - Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
  • Barbet Schroeder - Terror's Advocate (L'avocat de la terreur)
• 2008: Ari Folman - Vals Im Bashir
  • Peter Gilbert, Steve James - At the Death House Door
  • Elizabeth Farnsworth, Patricio Lanfranco Leverton - The Judge and the General
  • James Marsh - Man on Wire
  • Gonzalo Arijón - Stranded: I've Come from a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains
• 2009: Louie Psihoyos - The Cove
  • Sacha Gervasi - Anvil! The True Story of Anvil
  • Mai Iskander - Garbage Dreams
  • Robert Kenner - Food, Inc.
  • Geoffrey Smith - The English Surgeon
  • Agnes Varda - The Beaches of Agnès

2010s

• 2010: Charles Ferguson - Inside Job
  • Lixin Fan - Last Train Home
  • Alex Gibney - Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
  • Davis Guggenheim - Waiting for "Superman"
  • Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington - Restrepo
• 2011: James Marsh - Project Nim
  • Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky - Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
  • Steve James - The Interrupters
  • Richard Press - Bill Cunningham New York
  • Martin Scorsese - George Harrison: Living in the Material World
• 2012: Malik Bendjelloul - Searching for Sugar Man
  • Kirby Dick - The Invisible War
  • David France - How to Survive a Plague
  • Lauren Greenfield - The Queen of Versailles
  • Alison Klayman - Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
• 2013: Jehane Noujaim - The Square
  • Zachary Heinzerling - Cutie and the Boxer
  • Joshua Oppenheimer - The Act of Killing
  • Sarah Polley - Stories We Tell
  • Lucy Walker - The Crash Reel
• 2014: Laura Poitras - Citizenfour
  • Dan Krauss - The Kill Team
  • John Maloof and Charlie Siskel - Finding Vivian Maier
  • Jesse Moss - The Overnighters
  • Orlando von Einsiedel - Virunga

External links

• DGA.org