All Time Directors

by eahmadis | created - 11 Jan 2018 | updated - 07 Mar 2021 | Public

This list is not in order yet.

1. 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 ...

Tokyo Story; Late Spring; Tokyo Twilight; Early Summer; An Autumn Afternoon; Late Autumn; Floating Weeds; Early Spring; The End of Summer; I Was Born, But...; Equinox Flower; An Inn in Tokyo; The Only Son; Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice; A Story of Floating Weeds; Record of a Tenement Gentleman; There Was a Father; A Hen in the Wind; The Munekata Sisters; The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family; and Passing Fancy

2. 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 (...

Autumn Sonata; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; Fanny and Alexander; Persona; Cries & Whispers; The Virgin Spring; Winter Light; The Silence; Shame; Hour of the Wolf; Saraband; Through a Glass Darkly; Scenes from a Marriage; Smiles of a Summer Night; The Passion of Anna; Sawdust and Tinsel; The Magician; Face to Face; Summer Interlude; Summer with Monika; and Brink of Life

3. 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...

Rashomon; Red Beard; Throne of Blood; Ran; Stray Dog; Seven Samurai; Yojimbo; Ikiru; Dersu Uzala; High and Low; Sanjuro; The Hidden Fortress; The Bad Sleep Well; Kagemusha; Dreams; Drunken Angel; Dodes'ka-den; The Lower Depths; and The Quiet Duel

4. 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 ...

Psycho; The Wrong Man; Shadow of a Doubt; Rear Window; The Birds; Frenzy; Vertigo; Rope; North by Northwest; Dial M for Murder; Rebecca; Notorious; The 39 Steps; Spellbound; Foreign Correspondent; To Catch a Thief; The Man Who Knew Too Much; Marnie; The Trouble with Harry; Blackmail; Sabotage and Suspicion

5. 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 ...

Mulholland Drive; The Elephant Man; The Straight Story; Blue Velvet; Lost Highway; Eraserhead; Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces; and Twin Peaks

6. 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 ...

La Notte; L'Eclisse; Red Desert; Il Grido; Blow-Up; and The Passenger

7. 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 ...

The Shining; Barry Lyndon; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; A Clockwork Orange; Full Metal Jacket; and Eyes Wide Shut

8. 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 ...

La Strada; 8½; La Dolce Vita; The Nights of Cabiria; I Vitelloni; and Il Bidone

9. Andrei Tarkovsky

Writer | Offret

The most famous Soviet film-maker since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky (the son of noted poet Arseniy Tarkovsky) studied music and Arabic in Moscow before enrolling in the Soviet film school VGIK. He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), which won the...

The Mirror; Ivan's Childhood; The Sacrifice; Andrei Rublev; Stalker; Nostalgia; Solaris; and The Steamroller and the Violin

10. F.W. Murnau

Director | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

F.W. Murnau was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air ...

Sunrise; Nosferatu; Faust; The Last Laugh; City Girl; Tabu: A Story of the South Seas; Desire;

11. 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. ...

M; Metropolis; Die Nibelungen: Siegfried; The Big Heat; Scarlet Street; Dr. Mabuse the Gambler; Fury; Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge; The Woman in the Window; The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse; Spies; The Three Lights; and Hangmen Also Die!

12. 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 ...

The Godfather; The Godfather: Part II; Apocalypse Now; The Conversation; and The Godfather: Part III

13. Charles Chaplin

Writer | The Great Dictator

Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...

City Lights; Modern Times; The Kid; The Gold Rush; Limelight; Monsieur Verdoux; and The Chaplin Revue

14. 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 ...

Jules and Jim; The 400 Blows; Day for Night; Stolen Kisses; Small Change; Shoot the Piano Player; The Wild Child; The Soft Skin; Bed & Board; The Man Who Loved Women; and Two English Girls

15. 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 ...

Sansho the Bailiff; Ugetsu; The Life of Oharu; A Story from Chikamatsu; Street of Shame; The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum; Nihonbashi; A Geisha; The Woman of Rumour; Sisters of the Gion; and Miss Oyu

16. Luis Buñuel

Writer | Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the ...

Viridiana; The Exterminating Angel; That Obscure Object of Desire; The Phantom of Liberty; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; Nazarin; The Young and the Damned; El; The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz; Belle de Jour; Diary of a Chambermaid; and The Milky Way

17. 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 ...

The White Ribbon; Caché; Amour; The Piano Teacher; Happy End; Code Unknown; Continent; and The Seventh

18. 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 ...

12 Angry Men; Before the Devil Knows You're Dead; Dog Day Afternoon; Network; Fail-Safe; The Hill; Serpico; The Verdict; The Pawnbroker; Running on Empty; Long Day's Journey Into Night; and Prince of the City

19. 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 ...

Ordet; The Passion of Joan of Arc; Day of Wrath; Vampyr; and Gertrud

20. 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 "...

The Return; Loveless; Leviathan; Elena; and The Banishment

21. John Ford

Director | The Quiet Man

John Ford came to Hollywood following one of his brothers, an actor. Asked what brought him to Hollywood, he replied "the train". He became one of the most respected directors in the business, in spite of being known for his westerns, which were not considered "serious" film. He won six Oscars, ...

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; The Grapes of Wrath; How Green Was My Valley; Stagecoach; The Searchers; The Quiet Man; My Darling Clementine; Mister Roberts; Fort Apache; Young Mr. Lincoln; 3 Bad Men; The Informer; Sergeant Rutledge; and Cameo Kirby

22. 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 ...

Sunset Boulevard; The Apartment; Some Like It Hot; Double Indemnity; Ace in the Hole; Stalag 17; The Lost Weekend; One, Two, Three; Sabrina; Witness for the Prosecution; The Major and the Minor; and Irma la Douce

23. David Lean

Director | Lawrence of Arabia

An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding ...

Lawrence of Arabia; Doctor Zhivago; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Brief Encounter; Great Expectations; Hobson's Choice; The Passionate Friends; and Ryan's Daughter

24. 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 ...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Once Upon a Time in the West; Once Upon a Time in America; For a Few Dollars More; A Fistful of Dollars; and Duck, You Sucker

25. 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 ...

Secrets & Lies; Vera Drake; All or Nothing; Happy-Go-Lucky; Bleak Moments; Life Is Sweet; High Hopes; Topsy-Turvy; Another Year; Mr. Turner; Career Girls; and Naked

26. Elia Kazan

Director | On the Waterfront

Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He ...

On the Waterfront; Splendor in the Grass; A Streetcar Named Desire; Viva Zapata!; A Face in the Crowd; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; East of Eden; America America; Wild River; Baby Doll; and Gentleman's Agreement

27. Buster Keaton

Actor | The General

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...

The General; Seven Chances; Our Hospitality; Sherlock Jr.; and The Navigator

28. Max Ophüls

Director | La ronde

Director Max Ophüls was born Max Oppenheimer in Saarbrücken, Germany. He began his career as a stage actor and director in the golden twenties. He worked in cities such as Stuttgart, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Vienna, Frankfurt, Breslau and Berlin. In 1929 his son Marcel Ophüls was born in Frankfurt, ...

Letter from an Unknown Woman; The Earrings of Madame De...; Le Plaisir; La Ronde; Liebelei; and Everybody's Woman

29. 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 ...

Germany Year Zero; Rome, Open City; General Della Rovere; The Flowers of St. Francis; and Journey to Italy

30. 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 ...

Raging Bull; Goodfellas; Taxi Driver; Casino; The King of Comedy; The Departed; After Hours; The Wolf of Wall Street; and The Last Temptation of Christ

31. 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 ...

No Country for Old Men; The Big Lebowski; Fargo; A Serious Man; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Barton Fink; Miller's Crossing; True Grit; Inside Llewyn Davis; and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

32. 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 ...

Le Notti Bianche; Rocco and His Brothers; The Leopard; La Terra Trema; Beautiful; Ossessione; Ludwig; The Damned; Conversation Piece; Senso; Death in Venice; and The Innocent

33. Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Producer | Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da

Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in Istanbul on January 26th, 1959. In 1976, he began studying chemical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, in a context of strong student unrest, boycotts and political polarization. In 1978, he switched courses to Electrical Engineering at Bogazici University. ...

The Wild Pear Tree; Winter Sleep; Once Upon a Time in Anatolia; Distant; Three Monkeys; Clouds of May; and The Town

34. 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, ...

Ashes and Diamonds; The Promised Land; Man of Marble; Kanal; Danton; The Maids of Wilko; Man of Iron; Korczak; Love at Twenty; Afterimage; and Katyn

35. William Wyler

Director | The Best Years of Our Lives

William Wyler was an American filmmaker who, at the time of his death in 1981, was considered by his peers as second only to John Ford as a master craftsman of cinema. The winner of three Best Director Academy Awards, second again only to Ford's four, Wyler's reputation has unfairly suffered as the...

The Heiress; The Little Foxes; Ben-Hur; Roman Holiday; The Best Years of Our Lives; Dodsworth; The Big Country; The Children's Hour; The Letter; Wuthering Heights; The Good Fairy; Funny Girl; The Collector; How to Steal a Million; Mrs. Miniver; Jezebel; These Three; Counsellor at Law; Friendly Persuasion; The Desperate Hours; and The Westerner

36. 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 ...

Hannah and Her Sisters; Take the Money and Run; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Annie Hall; Manhattan; Radio Days; Husbands and Wives; Love and Death; Midnight in Paris; Bullets Over Broadway; Interiors; Broadway Danny Rose; Blue Jasmine; and Sleeper

37. 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 ...

Le Cercle Rouge; Le Samourai; Le Deuxième Souffle; Bob le Flambeur; Le Doulos; Léon Morin, Priest; Le Silence de la Mer; and Army of Shadows

38. 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 (...

A Short Film About Love; Three Colors: Red; A Short Film About Killing; Three Colors: Blue; Blind Chance; The Double Life of Véronique; and No End



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