The "Best Director" Academy Award is presented to who members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences believe is the year's best director of a single film.

The "Best Director" Oscar for 2008 was awarded to The Coen Brothers for their work on No Country for Old Men, which also won "Best Picture" the same evening.

Other nominees included Julian Schnabel (for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Jason Reitman (for Juno), Tony Gilroy (for Michael Clayton), and Paul Thomas Anderson (for There Will Be Blood).

• 1934 - Frank Capra
• 1935 - John Ford
• 1942 - William Wyler
• 1945 - Billy Wilder
• 1957 - David Lean
• 1974 - Francis Ford Coppola
• 1977 - Woody Allen
• 1985 - Sydney Pollack
• 1992 - Clint Eastwood
• 1993 - Steven Spielberg
• 2006 - Martin Scorsese

• Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

• Coen Brothers Best Directing Oscar Award Speech from Oscars.org:
• Ethan Coen:
  • I don't have a lot to add to what I said earlier. Thank you.
• Joel Coen:
  • Ethan and I have been making stories with movie cameras since we were kids. In the late '60s when Ethan was 11 or 12, he got a suit and a briefcase and we went to the Minneapolis International Airport with a Super 8 camera and made a movie about shuttle diplomacy called "Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go." And honestly, what we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then. There are too many people to thank for this. We're really thrilled to have received it, and we're very thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox, so thank you very much.