The Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Director is an annual award given by the Houston Film Critics Society.

Year	Winner and nominees	Film
2007	Tim Burton	Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
	Joel Coen and Ethan Coen	No Country for Old Men
	Sidney Lumet	Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
	Sean Penn	Into the Wild
2008	Danny Boyle	Slumdog Millionaire
	David Fincher	The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
	Ron Howard	Frost/Nixon
	Christopher Nolan	The Dark Knight
	Gus Van Sant	Milk
2009	Kathryn Bigelow	The Hurt Locker
	James Cameron	Avatar
	Lee Daniels	Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
	Clint Eastwood	Invictus
	Jason Reitman	Up in the Air
	Quentin Tarantino	Inglourious Basterds

Year	Winner and nominees	Film
2010	David Fincher	The Social Network
	Darren Aronofsky	Black Swan
	Danny Boyle	127 Hours
	Joel Coen and Ethan Coen	True Grit
	Christopher Nolan	Inception
2011	Nicolas Winding Refn	Drive
	Woody Allen	Midnight in Paris
	Michel Hazanavicius	The Artist
	Terrence Malick	The Tree of Life
	Alexander Payne	The Descendants
2012	Ben Affleck	Argo
	Kathryn Bigelow	Zero Dark Thirty
	Tom Hooper	Les Misérables
	Steven Spielberg	Lincoln
	Quentin Tarantino	Django Unchained
2013	Alfonso Cuarón	Gravity
	Joel Coen and Ethan Coen	Inside Llewyn Davis
	Paul Greengrass	Captain Phillips
	Steve McQueen	12 Years a Slave
	Alexander Payne	Nebraska
2014	Richard Linklater	Boyhood
	Paul Thomas Anderson	Inherent Vice
	Wes Anderson	The Grand Budapest Hotel
	Damien Chazelle	Whiplash
	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	Birdman
2015	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	The Revenant
	Lenny Abrahamson	Room
	Tom McCarthy	Spotlight
	George Miller	Mad Max: Fury Road
	Ridley Scott	The Martian
2016	Damien Chazelle	La La Land
	Barry Jenkins	Moonlight
	Kenneth Lonergan	Manchester by the Sea
	David Mackenzie	Hell or High Water
	Denis Villeneuve	Arrival
2017	Greta Gerwig	Lady Bird
	Guillermo del Toro	The Shape of Water
	Christopher Nolan	Dunkirk
	Jordan Peele	Get Out
	Steven Spielberg	The Post
2018	Alfonso Cuarón	Roma
	Bradley Cooper	A Star Is Born
	Barry Jenkins	If Beale Street Could Talk
	Yorgos Lanthimos	The Favourite
	Adam McKay	Vice
2019	Bong Joon-ho	Parasite
	Sam Mendes	1917
	Martin Scorsese	The Irishman
	Quentin Tarantino	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
	Lulu Wang	The Farewell

Year	Winner and nominees	Film
2020	Chloé Zhao	Nomadland
	Lee Isaac Chung	Minari
	Emerald Fennell	Promising Young Woman
	Regina King	One Night in Miami...
	Darius Marder	Sound of Metal
	Aaron Sorkin	The Trial of the Chicago 7
2021	Jane Campion	The Power of the Dog
	Paul Thomas Anderson	Licorice Pizza
	Kenneth Branagh	Belfast
	Guillermo del Toro	Nightmare Alley
	Denis Villeneuve	Dune
2022	Daniel Kwan Daniel Scheinert	Everything Everywhere All at Once
	Martin McDonagh	The Banshees of Inisherin
	Baz Luhrmann	Elvis
	Steven Spielberg	The Fabelmans
	Todd Field	TÁR
	Sarah Polley	Women Talking
2023	Christopher Nolan	Oppenheimer
	Greta Gerwig	Barbie
	Yorgos Lanthimos	Poor Things
	Alexander Payne	The Holdovers
	Martin Scorsese	Killers of the Flower Moon

• Houston Film Critics Society official website