AFT Awards: Best Director

This is the twenty-third category of the 11th 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):
A United Kingdom, Axolotl Overkill, Baby Driver, Band Aid, Below Her Mouth, Blade Runner 2049, Blame, Brigsby Bear, Call Me By Your Name, Coco, Darkest Hour, David Brent: Life on the Road, Deidra and Laney Rob a Train, Downsizing, Free and Easy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Holy Air, In the Fade, Ingrid Goes West, It Happened in L.A., Jungle, Landline, Logan, Marjorie Prime, Menashe, Mudbound, My Life as a Zucchini, Novitiate, One Percent More Humid, Permission, Princess Cyd, Rememory, Some Freaks, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Stronger, The Big Sick, The Boy Downstairs, The Disaster Artist, The Fate of the Furious, The Hero, The Last Movie Star, The Last Word, The Meyerowitz Stories, The Salesman, The Vanishing of Sidney Hall, The Wedding Plan, The Women's Balcony, The Zookeeper's Wife, Tomorrow Ever After, Wilson, Wonder, Wonderstruck

Runners-up:
Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird)
Martin Zandvliet (Land of Mine)
Maysaloun Hamoud (In Between)
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Battle of the Sexes)
Andrew J. Smith and Alex Smith (Walking Out)

The winner:
Sean Baker (The Florida Project) transformed a simple story of those living on the outskirts of success into a stunning, powerful portrait of poverty in America.

Other nominees:
Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water) guided another masterful vision of a misunderstood monster to the screen with a loving and sweet touch. Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds) invigorated a dark story of two unlikely friends with humor and a sense of purpose. Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) didn’t need outer space or time travel to tell a compelling story filled with intensity and expert pacing. Jamie M. Dagg (Sweet Virginia) helmed a gripping, suspenseful film with focus and a fierce commitment to his characters.