Based on the world record nomination from the America Records Institute (AMRI) and Decision No. WK/USA.INDIA1435/2026/No.890, the World Records Union (WorldKings) officially declared as Kathryn Bigelow the world’s first female director to win an Oscar.

Kathryn Bigelow 

Kathryn Ann Bigelow (born November 27, 1951) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She was the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for The Hurt Locker (2008), a tense drama set during the Iraq War.

Bigelow studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and in the early 1970s she moved to New York City to participate in the Whitney Museum’s independent study program. She soon became interested in filmmaking and eventually earned a scholarship to the graduate film school at Columbia University.

After graduating from Columbia in 1979, Bigelow began working on her first feature-length movie, The Loveless, which she cowrote and codirected (with Monty Montgomery). Bigelow made her directorial film debut with the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1981). She rose to prominence directing the thrillers Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991), Strange Days (1995), and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002).

Bigelow’s next directorial project was the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker (2008). The low-budget film follows an elite squad of bomb detonators working in Iraq. Avoiding the politics of the war, she explored the dangers of armed conflict and the attraction it holds for some soldiers. In addition to Bigelow’s Oscar win for director, the movie earned five other Academy Awards, including best picture.

After that, she has since directed the political action thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012), the crime drama Detroit (2017), and the political thriller A House of Dynamite (2025).

She directed episodes of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1998–1999), and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for her work on the documentary film Cartel Land (2015).

According to en.wikipedia.org; britannica.com