AFT Awards: Best Director

This is the twenty-eighth category of the 4th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order):
Alice in Wonderland, The American, Another Year, Biutiful, Blue Valentine, City of Your Final Destination, Daybreakers, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, District 13: Ultimatum, Down Terrace, Easy A, The Eclipse, Fair Game, The Father of My Children, The Fighter, Fish Tank, Flipped, Four Lions, The Freebie, The Ghost Writer, The Girl on the Train, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Good Heart, The Greatest, Handsome Harry, Harry Brown, Heartbreaker, I Am Love, Iron Man 2, It's Kind of a Funny Story, The Joneses, The Killer Inside Me, The King's Speech, Kisses, The Last New Yorker, Leaves of Grass, Leaving, Lebanon, Life During Wartime, Looking for Eric, The Losers, Mother, Mother and Child, Of Gods and Men, Ondine, Please Give, Rabbit Hole, Red Riding: 1974, Red Riding: 1980, Red Riding: 1983, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shutter Island, Tamara Drewe, Tangled, Toy Story 3, Wild Grass, Winter's Bone, Youth in Revolt

Runners-up:
DAVID MICHOD (Animal Kingdom)
SOFIA COPPOLA (Somewhere)
DANNY BOYLE (127 Hours)
JACQUES AUDIARD (A Prophet)
JUAN JOSE CAMPANELLA (The Secret in their Eyes)

The winner:
Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) presented a gripping, fascinating portrait of an unconventional family that demanded the entirety of its viewer’s attention.

Other nominees:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Micmacs) brought his latest jovial, inventive imagined universe to his life with a ragtag bunch of individualistic characters. David Fincher (The Social Network) transformed an ordinary story about college nerds into a must-see movie experience. Christopher Nolan (Inception) crafted layers upon layers of realities into a coherent and magnificent maze. Niels Arden Oplev (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) turned into a complicated mystery into a magnetic thriller.