1978
Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter
Hal Ashby, Coming Home
Warren Beatty, Buck Henry, Heaven Can Wait
Paul Mazursky, An Unmarried Woman
Alan Parker, Midnight Express

1977
Woody Allen, Annie Hall
George Lucas, Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope
Herbert Ross, The Turning Point
Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Fred Zinnemann, Julia

1976
John G. Avildsen, Rocky
Sidney Lumet, Network
Alan J. Pakula, All the President's Men
Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver
Lina Wertmüller, Seven Beauties

1975
Miloš Forman, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Robert Altman, Nashville
Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon
Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon
Steven Spielberg, Jaws

1974
Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation
Bob Fosse, Lenny
Sidney Lumet, Murder on the Orient Express
Roman Polanski, Chinatown

1973
George Roy Hill, The Sting
Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango in Paris
William Friedkin, The Exorcist
George Lucas, American Graffiti
Sidney Lumet, Serpico

1972
Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather
John Boorman, Deliverance
Bob Fosse, Cabaret
George Roy Hill, Slaughterhouse Five
Martin Ritt, Sounder

1971
William Friedkin, The French Connection
Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show
Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange
Robert Mulligan, Summer of '42
John Schlesinger, Sunday Bloody Sunday

1970
Franklin J. Schaffner, Patton
Robert Altman, M*A*S*H
Arthur Hiller, Love Story
David Lean, Ryan's Daughter
Bob Rafelson, Five Easy Pieces