Directors
by mael-vannes | created - 30 Jun 2014 | updated - 30 Jun 2014 | Public1. Kar-Wai Wong
Director | Yi dai zong shi
Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1956) is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Ah fei zing zyun (1990), Dung che sai duk (1994), Chung Hing sam lam (1994), Do lok tin si (1995), Chun gwong ...
2. 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). ...
3. Tsai Ming-liang
Director | Qingshaonian Nuozha
Born in Kuching, Malaysia, he graduated from the Drama and Cinema Department of the Chinese Cultural University of Taiwan and worked as a theatrical producer and TV director. His second feature film, Vive L'Amour (1994), won the Golden Lion (best picture) at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. His ...
4. Hong Sang-soo
Director | Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da
Hong Sang-soo was born on October 25, 1960 in Seoul, Korea. He is a director and writer, known for Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), Night and Day (2008) and The Woman Who Ran (2020).
5. Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Producer | Cike Nie Yin Niang
Of the ten films that Hsiao-Hsien Hou directed between 1980 and 1989, seven received best film or best director awards from prestigious international films festivals in Venice, Berlin, Hawaii, and the Festival of the Three Continents in Nantes. In a 1988 worldwide critics' poll, Hou was championed ...
6. 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.
7. 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, ...
8. 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 ...
9. Edward Yang
Writer | Yi yi
Born on November 6, 1947 in Shanghai, China, Edward Yang has become one of the most talented international filmmakers of his generation. Along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-Liang, Yang ranks among the leading artists of the Taiwanese New Wave, and one of the world's most brilliant auteurs. ...
10. Quentin Tarantino
Writer | Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of...
11. Wes Anderson
Director | Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Texas Ann (Burroughs), is an archaeologist turned real estate agent, and his father, Melver Leonard Anderson, worked in advertising and PR. He has two brothers, Eric and Mel. Anderson's parents divorced when he was a young child, an ...
12. 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 ...
13. Sofia Coppola
Actress | The Godfather Part III
Sofia Coppola was born on May 14, 1971 in New York City, New York, USA as Sofia Carmina Coppola. She is a director, known for Somewhere (2010), Lost in Translation (2003), and Marie Antoinette (2006). She has been married to Thomas Mars since August 27, 2011. They have two daughters, Romy and ...
14. 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. ...
15. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Director | Memoria
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Bangkok) grew up in Khon Kaen, a city in the north east of Thailand. He has a degree in Architecture from Khon Kaen University and a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been making films and videos since the ...
16. 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 ...
17. Billy Wilder
Writer | The Apartment
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many ...
18. 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 ...
19. 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...
20. 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 ...
21. Fruit Chan
Director | Na yeh ling san, ngoh choh seung liu Wong Gok hoi mong Dai Bou dik hung Van
Fruit Chan was born on April 15, 1959 in Guangdong, China. He is an actor and director, known for The Midnight After (2014), Three Husbands (2018) and Made in Hong Kong (1997).
22. Im Sang-soo
Director | Hanyo
Im Sang-soo was born on April 27, 1962 in Seoul, South Korea. He is a director and writer, known for The Housemaid (2010), A Good Lawyer's Wife (2003) and The Old Garden (2006).
23. 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...
24. Jean Eustache
Editor | La maman et la putain
Jean Eustache was born on November 30, 1938 in Pessac, Gironde, France. He was an editor and director, known for The Mother and the Whore (1973), My Little Loves (1974) and Les photos d'Alix (1982). He died on November 3, 1981 in Paris, France.
25. 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 ...
26. Liang Zhao
Director | Bei xi mo shou
Zhao Liang was born in Liaoning Province, and graduated from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 1992. Living in Beijing since 1993, Zhao Liang has been working as an independent documentary filmmaker as well as a multimedia artist in photography and video art. His films have premiered at Cannes, Venezia...
27. Johnnie To
Director | Hak se wooi
With over thirty directing and producing credits to his name, Johnnie To enjoyed international breakthroughs with Election (2005), Election 2 (2006) (aka "Triad Election") and Exiled (2006); those films enjoyed multiple international film festival appearances and were separately sold to more than ...
28. Mamoru Oshii
Director | Kôkaku kidôtai
Mamoru Oshii is a Japanese filmmaker, television director and screenwriter. Famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling, Oshii has directed a number of popular anime, including Urusei Yatsura (1981-1984), Angel's Egg (1985), Patlabor: The Movie (1989), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Ghost in ...
29. Wang Bing
Director | Jiabiangou
Wang Bing was born on November 17, 1967 in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. He is a director and cinematographer, known for The Ditch (2010), Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002) and Three Sisters (2012).
30. Lav Diaz
Writer | Ang babaeng humayo
Lav Diaz was born on December 30, 1958 in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao, Mindanao, Philippines. He is a writer and director, known for The Woman Who Left (2016), Season of the Devil (2018) and From What Is Before (2014).
31. Darren Aronofsky
Writer | Pi
Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation). He won ...
32. Mathieu Kassovitz
Actor | Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz was born on August 3, 1967 in Paris, France. He is an actor and director, known for Amélie (2001), La haine (1995) and The Fifth Element (1997).
33. Mark Duplass
Actor | Safety Not Guaranteed
Mark Duplass was born on December 7, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Creep (2014) and The One I Love (2014). He has been married to Katie Aselton since August 26, 2006. They have two children.
34. Shirley Clarke
Director | The Cool World
Shirley Clarke is an important figure in the history of mid-20th century independent cinema. Born Shirley Marion Brimberg to Samuel Nathan and Florence (Rosenberg) Brimberg, she was the eldest of their three daughters. She grew up in a wealthy family. Her father, who was born in present-day Belarus...
35. Joe Swanberg
Actor | You're Next
Joe Swanberg was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1981. He moved around quite a bit growing up, even spending two years on an island in the Pacific Ocean named Kwajalein. He studied film production at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he developed an interest in emerging video technology ...
36. 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).
37. Andrew Bujalski
Director | Computer Chess
Andrew Bujalski, born in Boston in 1977, is the son of an artist-turned-businesswoman, Sheila Dubman, and a businessman, Edmund Bujalski. Andrew studied film at Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, where the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman was his thesis advisor.
He shot his ...
38. Patrick Tam
Actor | Ye shou xing jing
Patrick Tam was born on March 19, 1968 in Hong Kong, China. He is an actor, known for Beast Cops (1998), Born Wild (2001) and The Merger (2015).
39. Jonas Mekas
Director | The Brig
Jonas Mekas, born December 24, 1922, Semeniskiai, Birzai, Lithuania, is a director, cinematographer, editor, writer, actor, poet, artist and publicist. More than 60 years of tireless work in film, arts and media has earned him the epithet "The Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema". In 1944 ...
40. Harmony Korine
Director | Gummo
Harmony Korine was born in 1973 in Bolinas, California. His family moved to the east coast of the United States when he was five, and he spent his early years in Nashville, Tennessee, and New York. At the age of nineteen, he wrote the critically acclaimed screenplay Kids (1995) for director Larry ...
41. 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 ...
42. 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 ...
43. Gaspar Noé
Director | Enter the Void
Gaspar Noé is an Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in France. He is the son of Luis Felipe Noé, an Argentinian artist. He directed I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, Carne, Lux Æterna, Sodomites and Vortex. His films are known for having a sensory overload ...
44. Steve McQueen
Director | 12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen was born on October 9, 1969 in London, England, UK. He is a director and producer, known for 12 Years a Slave (2013), Shame (2011) and Hunger (2008). He is married to Bianca Stigter. They have two children.
45. 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 ...
46. 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 ...
47. Koreyoshi Kurahara
Director | Nankyoku monogatari
Koreyoshi Kurahara was born on May 31, 1927 in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. He was a director and writer, known for Antarctica (1983), Eight Below (2006) and Kaitei kara kita onna (1959). He was married to Yumiko Miyagino. He died on December 28, 2002 in Yokohama, Japan.
48. Andy Warhol
Director | Blue Movie
Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavackyová Warholová, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years...
49. Stanley Kwan
Director | Lan Yu
Stanley Kwan was born on October 9, 1957 in Hong Kong. He is a director and producer, known for Lan Yu (2001), Hold You Tight (1998) and Rouge (1987).
50. Ann Hui
Director | Nu ren si shi
Born in China in 1947, Ann Hui moved to Hong Kong when she was still in her youth. After graduating in English and Comparative Literature from Hong Kong University, she spent two years at the London Film School. Returning to Hong Kong, she worked as an assistant to director King Hu before joining ...
51. Peter Tscherkassky
Director | Outer Space
Born in 1958 in Vienna. 1979 - 84 stay in Berlin. Filmmaker since 1979. Studied philosophy. Doctoral thesis: ^ÓFilm as Art. Towards a critical aesthetics of cinematography^Ô (1985/86). 1989 National Art Award for Film. Teaches filmmaking at the Academy of Art, Linz. Founding member of Sixpack Film....
52. 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 ...
53. Sergio Leone
Writer | Once Upon a Time in America
Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in ...
54. Maurice Pialat
Director | À nos amours
Maurice Pialat was a French film director. Film critics have noted the naturalist style of his films, and their autobiographical elements.
Pialat obtained his first camera when only 16-years-old, but his early career involved creating documentary short films. His ambition was to become a painter and...
55. Leos Carax
Director | Holy Motors
Leos Carax made several short films and also wrote film criticism, then at the age of 24 years made a very strong first feature Boy Meets Girl (1984). The film played at the 1984 Cannes film festival and was a critical triumph. It paved the way for Carax's second feature Bad Blood (1986) (Bad Blood...
56. Ye Lou
Director | Fu cheng mi shi
Ye Lou was born (in 1965) and grew up in Shanghai, a city he would film beautifully in his Suzhou River (2000) (Suzhou River). After studying cinema at the Beijing Film Academy, the gifted young man debuted in the film career as an assistant director, a producer and a short subjects director. His ...
57. Lee Chang-dong
Writer | Beoning
Lee Chang-Dong was born in 1954 in Daegu, which some consider the most right-wing city in South Korea. Lee is a former high-school teacher and an acclaimed novelist. He turned to cinema when he was over 40 years old. His debut film "Green Fish" (1997) brought immediate success and critical acclaim....
58. Mikio Naruse
Director | Ukigumo
Considered a major figure of Japan's 'golden age of cinema', Mikio Naruse was a filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer who directed 89 films in the period 1930 to 1967. Although Naruse's work is lesser known in the twenty-first century than those of his contemporaries Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi...
59. Oscar Micheaux
Writer | Within Our Gates
Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American to produce a feature-length film (The Homesteader (1919)) and a sound feature-length film (The Exile (1931)), is not only a major figure in American film for these milestones, but because his oeuvre is a window into the American history and psyche ...
60. Louis Delluc
Director | Fumée noire
Louis Delluc was born on October 14, 1890 in Le Buisson-de-Cadouin, Dordogne, France. He was a director and writer, known for Fumée noire (1920), The Woman from Nowhere (1922) and L'inondation (1924). He was married to Ève Francis. He died on March 22, 1924 in Paris, France.
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