Directors - IMDb

1. Pablo Larraín

Producer | No

Pablo Larraín was born in Santiago, Chile. He is a director, writer and producer, known for Spencer (2021), Jackie (2016), El Club (2015), NO (2012), among others. Together with his brother Juan de Dios Larraín, they founded Fabula in 2004, one of the most prolific production companies in Latin ...

2. David O. Russell

Director | American Hustle

David Owen Russell is an American film writer, director, and producer, known for a cinema of intense, tragi-comedic characters whose love of life can surpass dark circumstances faced in very specific worlds. His films address such themes as mental illness as stigma or hope; invention of self and ...

3. Jee-woon Kim

Director | Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom

Kim Ji-woon was born in Seoul, South Korea. He began his career as an actor before becoming a stage director with productions such as "Hot Sea" in 1994 and "Movie, Movie" in 1995. He then began scripting for films, his first work, 97's "Wonderful Seasons" won Best Screenplay award at Korea's ...

4. Krzysztof Kieslowski

Writer | Trois couleurs: Bleu

Krzysztof Kieslowski graduated from Lódz Film School in 1969, and became a documentary, TV and feature film director and scriptwriter. Before making his first film for TV, Przejscie podziemne (1974) (The Underground Passage), he made a number of short documentaries. His next TV title, Personnel (...

5. Joachim Trier

Director | Thelma

Joachim Trier is a Norwegian writer and director. He is known for Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011), Louder Than Bombs (2015) and Thelma (2017).

Trier also directed three short films, Pietà (2000), Still (2001) and Procter (2002).

His father, Jacob Trier, was the sound technician of The ...

6. Michael Haneke

Writer | Caché

A true master of his craft, Michael Haneke is one of the greatest film artists working today and one who challenges his viewers each year and work goes by, with films that reflect real portions of life in realistic, disturbing and unforgettable ways. One of the most genuine filmmakers of the world ...

7. Márta Mészáros

Director | Örökbefogadás

Márta Mészáros was born on September 19, 1931 in Budapest, Hungary. She is a director and writer, known for Adoption (1975), Diary for My Children (1984) and Diary for My Lovers (1987). She was previously married to Miklós Jancsó, Laszlo Karda and Jan Nowicki.

8. András Kovács

Director | Hideg napok

András Kovács was born on June 20, 1925 in Chindia, Romania. He was a director and writer, known for Hideg napok (1966), The Stud Farm (1978) and Bekötött szemmel (1975). He died on March 11, 2017 in Budapest, Hungary.

9. Orson Welles

Actor | Citizen Kane

His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...

10. Mike Leigh

Director | Secrets & Lies

Mike Leigh is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique. He began his career as a theatre ...

11. Baltasar Kormákur

Producer | Mýrin

Baltasar Kormákur is an actor, producer and director whose work spans theater, movies and television. Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, he graduated as an actor from Iceland's National Academy of Fine Arts in 1990. He was immediately signed on by the National Theatre of Iceland, where he worked as one of...

12. Dan Gilroy

Writer | Nightcrawler

Dan Gilroy was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Frank D. Gilroy, and sculptor and writer Ruth Dorothy. His brother Tony Gilroy is a screenwriter and director; and his fraternal twin brother, John Gilroy, is a film editor. Through his father, he is of ...

13. Justin Kurzel

Director | Snowtown

Known for his bold career growth, Australian director Justin Kurzel, who, after the striking debut feature The Snowtown Murders (2011), which conquered hearts of people on many festivals, has chosen a Shakespearean adaptation (Macbeth (2015)) starring famous international film actors Michael ...

14. Terrence Malick

Writer | Days of Heaven

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen ...

15. David Cronenberg

Actor | The Fly

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...

16. Costa-Gavras

Director | Z

Costa-Gavras was born on February 12, 1933 in Loutra-Iraias, Greece. He is a director and writer, known for Z (1969), Missing (1982) and Amen. (2002). He has been married to Michèle Ray-Gavras since 1968. They have two children.

17. Damien Chazelle

Writer | La La Land

Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Celia Sayre (Martin) Chazelle, is an American-Canadian writer and professor of history at The College of New Jersey. His father, Bernard Chazelle, is a French-American Eugene Higgins...

18. Mike Mills

Director | Beginners

Mike Mills was born in 1966, Berkeley, California. He graduated from Cooper Union, 1989.

He works as a filmmaker, graphic designer and artist. As a filmmaker, Mike has completed a number of music videos, commercials, short films, documentaries, and the feature film Thumbsucker (2005). Architecture ...

19. Andrew Dominik

Director | Chopper

Andrew Dominik was born on October 7, 1967 in Wellington, New Zealand. He is a director and writer, known for Chopper (2000), Blonde (2022) and Killing Them Softly (2012).

20. Paul Thomas Anderson

Director | Punch-Drunk Love

Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making...

21. Neill Blomkamp

Director | District 9

Neill Blomkamp is a South African-Canadian film director and screenwriter who is known for the science fiction films District 9, Elysium and Chappie. He also directed the supernatural horror film Demonic and the 2007 short film Halo: Landfall, based on the Microsoft science fiction video game ...

22. Bernardo Bertolucci

Writer | Il conformista

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (...

23. Kenneth Lonergan

Writer | Manchester by the Sea

Kenneth Lonergan is a playwright, screenwriter and director. His film, You Can Count on Me (2000), which he wrote and directed, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, won the Sundance 2000 Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, the NY Film Critics Circle, LA Film ...

24. Xavier Dolan

Actor | J'ai tué ma mère

Xavier Dolan was born on March 20, 1989 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for I Killed My Mother (2009), Tom at the Farm (2013) and Heartbeats (2010).

25. Lars von Trier

Writer | Dancer in the Dark

Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly ...

26. Pedro Almodóvar

Writer | Hable con ella

The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study ...

27. Andrey Zvyagintsev

Director | Nelyubov

Director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev is the winner of the Venice Film Festival (2003) and the Cannes Film Festival (2011, 2014, 2017). Two-time the Academy Awards and the BAFTA Awards nominee. Winner or the Golden Globe Awards (2015) for his film "Leviathan". In 2018, his latest work "...

28. Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer | The Neon Demon

Writer, director, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1970, to Anders Refn, a film director and editor, and Vibeke Winding (née Tuxen), a cinematographer. Just before he turned 11, in 1981, he moved to New York with his parents, where he lived out his teen years. ...

29. Kore-eda Hirokazu

Director | Manbiki kazoku

Born in Tokyo in 1962. Originally intended to be a novelist, but after graduating from Waseda University in 1987 went on to become an assistant director at T.V. Man Union. Snuck off set to film Mou hitotsu no kyouiku - Ina shogakkou haru gumi no kiroku (1991). His first feature, Maborosi (1995), ...

30. Takeshi Kitano

Actor | Zatôichi

Takeshi Kitano originally studied to become an engineer, but was thrown out of school for rebellious behavior. He learned comedy, singing and dancing from famed comedian Senzaburô Fukami. Working as a lift boy on a nightclub with such features as comic sketches and striptease dancing, Kitano saw ...

31. Akira Kurosawa

Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater...

32. Yasujirô Ozu

Writer | Tôkyô monogatari

Tokyo-born Yasujiro Ozu was a movie buff from childhood, often playing hooky from school in order to see Hollywood movies in his local theatre. In 1923 he landed a job as a camera assistant at Shochiku Studios in Tokyo. Three years later, he was made an assistant director and directed his first ...

33. Kenji Mizoguchi

Director | Ugetsu monogatari

Coming from a lower class family Mizoguchi entered the production company Nikkatsu as an actor specialized in female roles. Later he became an assistant director and made his first film in 1922. Although he filmed almost 90 movies in the silent era, only his last 12 productions are really known ...

34. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...

35. Wim Wenders

Director | Der Himmel über Berlin

Wim Wenders is an Oscar-nominated German filmmaker who was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until ...

36. Werner Herzog

Director | Fitzcarraldo

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...

37. Jean-Luc Godard

Director | Bande à part

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of ...

38. Jean Renoir

Writer | La règle du jeu

Son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste, he had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. After the end of World War I, where he won the Croix de Guerre, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married Catherine Hessling, for whom he ...

39. Fritz Lang

Actor | Le mépris

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. ...

40. Roberto Rossellini

Writer | Roma città aperta

The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American ...

41. Luchino Visconti

Writer | Il gattopardo

Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally ...

42. Vittorio De Sica

Director | Ladri di biciclette

Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee ...

43. Federico Fellini

Writer | Le notti di Cabiria

The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the ...

44. Michelangelo Antonioni

Writer | Blow-Up

Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the ...

45. Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writer | Il Decameron

Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...

46. Roberto Benigni

Actor | La vita è bella

Roberto Benigni was born on October 27, 1952 in Manciano La Misericordia, Castiglion Fiorentino, Tuscany, Italy. He is an actor and writer, known for Life Is Beautiful (1997), The Tiger and the Snow (2005) and Down by Law (1986). He has been married to Nicoletta Braschi since December 26, 1991.

47. Giuseppe Tornatore

Director | La migliore offerta

Giuseppe Tornatore was born on May 27, 1956 in Bagheria, Sicily, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for The Best Offer (2013), Cinema Paradiso (1988) and The Legend of 1900 (1998). He is married to Roberta Pacetti.

48. Luca Guadagnino

Director | Call Me by Your Name

Luca Guadagnino was born on August 10, 1971 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He is a director and producer, known for Call Me by Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018) and Bones and All (2022).

49. Robert Bresson

Writer | Au hasard Balthazar

Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The ...

50. Paolo Genovese

Writer | Perfetti sconosciuti

Paolo Genovese was born on August 20, 1966 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is a writer and director, known for Perfect Strangers (2016), The Immature (2011) and The Place (2017).

51. Matteo Garrone

Director | Dogman

Matteo Garrone was born in Rome in 1968. He is the son of a theatre critic, Nico Garrone, and a photographer. In 1996 he won the Sacher d'Oro, an award sponsored by Nanni Moretti, with the short film Silhouette (1996), that became one of the three episodes of his first feature film Land in Between ...

52. Franco Zeffirelli

Director | Romeo and Juliet

Franco Zeffirelli is an Italian director and producer of operas, films and television. He was also a senator from 1994 until 2001 for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party. Some of his operatic designs and productions have become worldwide classics.

He was known for several of the movies he ...

53. François Truffaut

Writer | La nuit américaine

French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the ...

54. Claude Chabrol

Director | Le beau Serge

Claude Chabrol was born on June 24, 1930 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Le Beau Serge (1958), La Cérémonie (1995) and Story of Women (1988). He was married to Aurore Chabrol, Stéphane Audran and Agnès Goute. He died on September 12, 2010 in Paris, France.

55. Alain Resnais

Director | Hiroshima mon amour

Alain Resnais was born on June 3, 1922 in Vannes, Morbihan, France. He was a director and editor, known for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Same Old Song (1997) and My American Uncle (1980). He was married to Sabine Azéma and Florence Malraux. He died on March 1, 2014 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, ...

56. Jacques Rivette

Director | La Belle Noiseuse

Although François Truffaut has written that the New Wave began "thanks to Rivette," the films of this masterful French director are not well known. Rivette, like his "Cahiers du Cinéma" colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, did graduate to filmmaking but, like Rohmer...

57. Andrzej Wajda

Director | Katyn

Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director. He is the most prominent filmmaker in Poland known for The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyn (2007).

He was Born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. His mother, Aniela Wajda, was a teacher at a Ukrainian school. His father, ...

58. Milos Forman

Director | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in ...

59. Jacques Tati

Writer | Playtime

The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. His grandfather, Count Dimitri, had been a general in the Imperial Army and had served as military attaché to the Russian Embassy in Paris. His father, Emmanuel Taticheff, was a well-to-do picture framer who ...

60. Andrzej Munk

Director | Pasazerka

Andrzej Munk was born on October 16, 1920 in Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland. He was a director and writer, known for Passenger (1963), Eroica (1958) and Man on the Tracks (1957). He died on September 20, 1961 in Lowicz, Lódzkie, Poland.

61. Ingmar Bergman

Writer | Smultronstället

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (...

62. Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writer | Gertrud

The illegitimate son of a Danish farmer and his Swedish housekeeper, Carl Theodor Dreyer was born in Copenhagen on the 3th of February, 1889. He spent his early years in various foster homes before being adopted by the Dreyers at the age of two. Contrary to popular belief (perhaps nourished by the ...

63. Mikhail Kalatozov

Director | Letyat zhuravli

Mikhail Kalatozov was born on December 28, 1903 in Tiflis, Russian Empire [now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia]. He was a director and cinematographer, known for The Cranes Are Flying (1957), True Friends (1954) and Zagovor obrechyonnykh (1950). He died on March 27, 1973 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now ...

64. Grigoriy Chukhray

Director | Ballada o soldate

Studied at the Moscow Cinema Institute under Soviet film master Mikhail Romm. He found fame after his 1959 film "Ballad of a Soldier" which is considered one of the best Soviet war films and which has played all over the world.

65. Volker Schlöndorff

Director | Die Blechtrommel

Has studied economy and political sciences as well as at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique (IDHEC) in Paris, France. Worked as an assistant director with Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais. Founded his own production company Bioskop Film together with Reinhard Hauff ...

66. Jean-Pierre Melville

Writer | Le samouraï

The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its ...

67. Agnès Varda

Director | Cléo de 5 à 7

Agnès Varda was born on May 30, 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and Faces Places (2017). She was married to Jacques Demy. She died on March 29, 2019 in Paris, France.

68. Éric Rohmer

Director | Ma nuit chez Maud

Admirers have always had difficulty explaining Éric Rohmer's "Je ne sais quoi." Part of the challenge stems from the fact that, despite his place in French Nouvelle Vague (i.e., New Wave), his work is unlike that of his colleagues. While this may be due to the auteur's unwillingness to conform, ...

69. Sergei Eisenstein

Director | Ivan Groznyy

The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and ...

70. Jirí Menzel

Director | Ostrzhe sledované vlaky

Jirí Menzel was born on February 23, 1938 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was an actor and director, known for Closely Watched Trains (1966), I Served the King of England (2006) and Larks on a String (1969). He was married to Olga Menzelová-Kelymanová. He died on September 5, ...

71. John Cassavetes

Actor | Rosemary's Baby

John Cassavetes was a Greek-American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He is considered a pioneer of American independent film, as he often financed his own films.

Cassavetes was born in New York City in 1929 to Nicholas John Cassavetes (1893-1979) and his wife, Katherine Demetre (1906-1983). ...

72. Peter Greenaway

Director | The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Peter Greenaway trained as a painter and began working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information in 1965. Shortly afterwards he started to make his own films. He has produced a wealth of short and feature-length films, but also paintings, novels and other books. He has held several ...

73. Ken Loach

Director | I, Daniel Blake

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it's virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context.

After studying law at St. Peter's College, Oxford, he branched out into ...

74. Tony Richardson

Director | Tom Jones

The son of a Shipley chemist he was initially connected with the stage first with the post war Shipley Young Theatre then with the Bradford Civic Theatre where he came into contact with the Bradford born author J B Priestley who recognising his potential commissioned him to write a TV documentary. ...

75. David Lynch

Writer | Twin Peaks

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

76. Stanley Kubrick

Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...

77. Martin Scorsese

Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...

78. Steven Spielberg

Producer | Schindler's List

One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...

79. Alfred Hitchcock

Director | Psycho

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and ...

80. Francis Ford Coppola

Producer | Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...

81. George Lucas

Writer | Star Wars

George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar ...

82. Brian De Palma

Director | Body Double

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...

83. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...

84. Karel Reisz

Director | The French Lieutenant's Woman

Karel Reisz was born on July 21, 1926 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and producer, known for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan! (1966). He was married to Betsy Blair and Julia Coppard. He died on November 25...

85. Lindsay Anderson

Director | If....

Lindsay was born in Bangalore, India but educated in England at Cheltenham College and Wadham College, Oxford where he was a classical scholar. He then spent 3 years war time service in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps. His career in the theatre started at the Royal Court in the late 1950's where he was...

86. Gus Van Sant

Director | Elephant

Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American filmmaker, painter, screenwriter, photographer and musician from Louisville, Kentucky who is known for directing films such as Good Will Hunting, the 1998 remake of Psycho, Gerry, Elephant, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, Milk, Last Days, Finding Forrester, ...

87. Jim Jarmusch

Director | Paterson

Moved to New York City at the age of seventeen from Akron, Ohio. Graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English, class of '75. Without any prior film experience, he was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts, New York.

88. Spike Lee

Director | Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended ...

89. Woody Allen

Writer | Annie Hall

Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.

Allen ...

90. Spike Jonze

Producer | Her

Spike Jonze made up one-third (along with Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman) of the triumvirate of genius minds behind Dirt Magazine, the brother publication of the much lamented ground-breaking Sassy Magazine. These three uncommon characters were all editors for Grand Royal Magazine as well, under the ...

91. Joel Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...

92. Sidney Lumet

Director | 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although ...

93. Sydney Pollack

Director | Tootsie

Sydney Pollack was an Academy Award-winning director, producer, actor, writer and public figure, who directed and produced over 40 films.

Sydney Irwin Pollack was born July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, USA, to Rebecca (Miller), a homemaker, and David Pollack, a professional boxer turned pharmacist...

94. Robert Altman

Director | Gosford Park

Robert Altman was born on February 20th, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri, to B.C. (an insurance salesman) and Helen Altman. He entered St. Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started...

95. Roman Polanski

Director | Chinatown

Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.

His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years ...

96. David Fincher

Director | Se7en

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials...

97. Terry Gilliam

Writer | Brazil

Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...

98. Danny Boyle

Director | 127 Hours

Daniel Francis Boyle is a British filmmaker, producer and writer from Radcliffe, Greater Manchester. He is known for directing 28 Days Later, 127 Hours, Trainspotting, T2 Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, Millions, Shallow Grave, The Beach, Yesterday, and Steve Jobs. He won many awards for ...

99. Ivan Passer

Director | Intimní osvyetlení

Ivan Passer was one of the key authors of the "new wave" of Czech cinema, a group of young people who forged an energetic and transgressive film movement in the 1960s, breaking away from the precepts of hard socialist realism. Passer was not only the author of the scenarios of his own films, but he...

100. Alfonso Cuarón

Producer | Gravity

Alfonso Cuarón Orozco was born on November 28th 1961 in Mexico City, Mexico. From an early age, he yearned to be either a film director or an astronaut. However, he did not want to enter the army, so he settled for directing. He didn't receive his first camera until his twelfth birthday, and then ...