The Filmfare Best Director Award is given by the Filmfare magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards South for Tamil (Kollywood) films. The awards were extended to "Best Director" in 1972.
Superlatives
K. Balachander has the record of winning most awards with 7 and winning the Award twice in a row, on two separate occasions (1974–1975 and 1980–1981). Mani Ratnam have received the award for five times which is the second most wins. Cheran have received the award four times. Sudha Kongara was the first of two women to have won this award for Irudhi Suttru in 2016, the second being Gayathri of Pushkar–Gayathri duo for Vikram Vedha in 2017. Other woman Director to have been nominated is Suhasini Maniratnam for Indira . S. Shankar remains the only Director to have won the Award for his first two films, Gentleman and Kadhalan . S. Shankar, Cheran , Bala , and Sasikumar are the four directors who have received the award for their first film. K. Balachander has most nominations with 18, followed by Bharathiraja and Mani Ratnam with 13.
Multiple nominations
18 nominations :K. Balachander
13 nominations :Bharathiraja, Mani Ratnam
9 nominations :S. Shankar
7 nominations :S. P. Muthuraman, Balu Mahendra, Vikraman
6 nominations :K. S. Ravikumar, A. R. Murugadoss
5 nominations :Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, K. Bhagyaraj, Cheran, Bala
4 nominations :Gautham Vasudev Menon, Vetrimaaran
3 nominations :Fazil, Mohan Raja, Vasanthabalan, P. Vasu, Selvaraghavan, Mahendran, Pa. Ranjith 2 nominations :P. Madhavan, C. V. Sridhar, A. C. Tirulokchandar, R. Sundarrajan, K. V. Anand, Manivannan, Atlee, Ram Kumar, Ameer Sultan, Prabhu Solomon, Hari, A. L. Vijay, Kamal Haasan, Balaji Sakthivel, Mysskin, Priyadarshan, Rajiv Menon, R. Parthiban, Sundar. C, A. Jagannathan, Sudha Kongara, Mari Selvaraj
Multiple wins
7 wins: K. Balachander
5 wins: Mani Ratnam
4 wins: Cheran
3 wins: S. Shankar, Bala
2 wins: Bharathiraja, S. P. Muthuraman, Vasanthabalan, Balu Mahendra, Sudha Kongara