AFT Awards: Best Director

This is the twenty-fourth category of the 10th 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):
Adult Life Skills, An Eye for Beauty, Aquarius, AWOL, Beyond the Mountains and Hills, Captain Fantastic, Deadpool, Dean, Denial, Dough, Elvis and Nixon, Equals, Eye in the Sky, Fences, Game of Aces, High-Rise, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, I, Daniel Blake, In a Valley of Violence, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?, Kubo and the Two Strings, Lion, Little Boxes, Maggie's Plan, My Golden Days, One Week and a Day, Pele: Birth of a Legend, Sand Storm, Sing Street, Snowden, The Birth of a Nation, The Jungle Book, The Light Between Oceans, The Lobster, The Measure of a Man, Things to Come, Wedding Doll, Wolves

Runners-up:
Mike Mills (20th Century Women)
Pedro Almodovar (Julieta)
Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
Clint Eastwood (Sully)

The winner:
Damien Chazelle (La La Land) brought a wonderful, energizing, and delightful musical to life with a keen attention to music and the power of dreaming.

Other nominees:
David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) constructed a strong, quiet, suspenseful narrative ready to explode at any moment. Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) steered a heartwrenching drama through enormous loss with a sensitive and lighthearted touch. Andrea Arnold (American Honey) crafted a mesmerizing exploration of directionless adventure as seen through the eyes of idealists with no sense of the world. Paul Verhoeven (Elle) helmed a creative, fascinating look at a protagonist who dealt with a horrific experience in an unconventional way.