Favorite Directors
by DIEU_ET_MAITRE | created - 03 Feb 2020 | updated - 21 Jul 2020 | Public
1. 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...
Stalker (1979) 10/10 Andrey Rublev (1966) 9/10 Zerkalo (1975) 9/10 Solyaris (1972) 8/10 Nostalghia (1983) 8/10 Offret (1986) 8/10
2. 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 ...
A Clockwork Orange 9/10 Full Metal Jacket 9/10 The Shining 9/10 Barry Lyndon 9/10 Eyes Wide Shut 9/10 2001: A Space Odyssey 9/10 Lolita 9/10 Dr. Strangelove 8/10 Paths of Glory 8/10 The Killing 6/10 Killer's Kiss 5/10 Fear and Desire 5/10 Spartacus 5/10
3. 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...
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes 10/10 Grizzly Man 9/10 Happy People 9/10 Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel 9/10 Nosferatu 8/10 Little Dieter Needs to Fly 8/10 The Bad Lieutenant 8/10 Mein liebster Feind 8/10 Into the Abyss 8/10 Herz aus Glas 8/10 My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done 7/10 Rescue Dawn 7/10 The White Diamond 7/10 Lo and Behold 7/10 La Soufrière 7/10 Encounters at the End of the World 6/10 Cave of Forgotten Dreams 6/10 The Wild Blue Yonder 6/10 Fitzcarraldo 6/10 Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen 5/10 Salt and Fire 5/10 Woyzeck 4/10
4. Vincent Gallo
Actor | Buffalo '66
Vincent Gallo. American-born, Buffalo, New York, 1961. Left home, moved to New York City in 1978, and began playing in the experimental musical group, Gray, with artist Jean Michel Basquiat. After leaving Gray, he formed the band, Bohack, and recorded the highly regarded avant-garde industrial ...
Buffalo '66 10/10 The Brown Bunny 9/10
5. 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 ...
6. 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 ...
Enter the Void 10/10
Irréversible 9/10
Seul contre tous 8/10
Climax 8/10
Love 8/10
Carne 7/10
7. Wojciech Has
Director | Pozegnania
Born in Kraków, Poland, in 1925. Feature film director. Graduated in 1946 from Cracow Film Institute, also studied painting. From 1947 to 1957 made a number of documentary shorts and educational films. Feature film debut: _The Noose_ (Petla, 1958, co-scr.). Other films: _Farewells_ (Pozegnania, ...
Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie 9/10 Sanatorium pod klepsydra 9/10
8. Alejandro Jodorowsky
Writer | El Topo
Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in Tocopilla, Chile on February 17, 1929. In 1939 he moved to Santiago where he attended university, was a circus clown and a puppeteer. In 1953 he went to Paris and studied mime with Marcel Marceau. He worked with Maurice Chevalier there and made a short film, La ...
The Holy Mountain 9/10 El Topo 9/10 Santa Sangre 8/10 Dance of Reality 8/10 Endless Poetry 7/10 Fando y Lis 6/10
9. Andrzej Zulawski
Writer | Possession
Born in Lvov, Ukraine; then he moved with his father Miroslaw Zulawski to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. In the late 1950s, he studied cinema in France. In the 1960s, he was an assistant of the famous Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. His feature debut The Third Part of the Night (1971) was ...
On the Silver Globe 10/10 Possession 8/10 My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days 7/10 The Third Part of the Night 7/10
10. 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. ...
Drive 10/10 Pusher Trilogy 9/10 Bleeder 9/10 Bronson 9/10 Valhalla Rising 9/10 Too Old To Die Young 9/10 The Neon Demon 7/10 Only God Forgives 6/10 Fear X 4/10
11. 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 ...
Twin Peaks 9/10 Blue Velvet 8/10 Mulholland Drive 8/10 The Elephant Man 8/10 Lost Highway 8/10 Inland Empire 7/10 Eraserhead 7/10 The Straight Story 7/10
12. 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 (...
Seventh Seal 8/10 Persona 8/10 Cries and Whispers 8/10 The Virgin Spring 7/10 Hour of the Wolf 7/10 Scenes of a Marriage 7/10 Shame 7/10 Through a Glass Darkly 7/10
13. 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 ...
La pianiste (2001) 8/10 Das weiße Band (2009) 8/10 Funny Games (1997) 8/10 Caché (2005) 8/10 Der siebente Kontinent (1989) 8/10 Benny's Video (1992) 7/10 71 Fragmente (1994) 7/10
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 ...
The Thin Red Line 8/10 Days of Heaven 8/10 To the Wonder 8/10 Knight of Cups 7/10 The Tree of Life 7/10 Badlands 7/10
15. Béla Tarr
Producer | Werckmeister harmóniák
Béla Tarr was born on July 21, 1955 in Pécs, Hungary. He is a producer and director, known for Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Turin Horse (2011) and Satantango (1994). He is married to Ágnes Hranitzky.
16. 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 ...
17. Walerian Borowczyk
Director | Docteur Jekyll et les femmes
Born in Kwilcz, Poland, Walerian Borowczyk trained as a painter and lithographer, winning Poland's National Prize in 1953. He began his film career as a film poster designer, then started making short animated films in the late 1950s. Moving to France in the early 1960s, he gained a reputation as a...
18. 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 ...
Rear Window 9/10 Vertigo 9/10 Psycho 9/10 The Birds 8/10 Frenzy 7/10
19. Takashi Miike
Director | Jûsan-nin no shikaku
Takashi Miike was born in the small town of Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harbored ambitions to race professionally. At the age of 18 he went to study at the film school in Yokohama founded by renowned director Shôhei Imamura, ...
The Birdpeople in China 9/10 Audition 9/10 Ichi the Killer 8/10 13 Assassins 8/10 Big Bang Juvenile A 8/10 Gozu 8/10 The Happiness of the Katakuris 7/10 Rainy Dog 6/10 Dead or Alive Trilogy 6/10 Visitor Q 5/10 Silver 5/10
20. 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 ...
21. Sergei Parajanov
Director | Tini zabutykh predkiv
One of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema Sergei Parajanov was born in Georgia to Armenian parents and it was always unlikely that his work would conform to the strict socialist realism that Soviet authorities preferred. After studying film and music, Parajanov became an assistant ...
22. 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, ...
23. Trent Harris
Director | The Beaver Trilogy
Trent Harris was born in 1952. He is a director and writer, known for The Beaver Trilogy (2000), The Orkly Kid (1985) and Luna Mesa (2011).
24. 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 ...
25. Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Director | Pociag
Jerzy Kawalerowicz was born on January 19, 1922 in Gwozdziec, Stanislawowskie, Poland [now Hvizdets, Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for Night Train (1959), Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and Death of a President (1977). He was married to Lucyna Winnicka, Maria Güntner and ...
26. 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 ...
27. Raúl Ruiz
Director | La Telenovela Errante
Chilean director Raúl, or Raoul, Ruiz (1941-2011) was one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers to emerge from 1960s World Cinema, providing more intellectual fun and artistic experimentation, shot for shot, than any filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard. A guerrilla who uncompromisingly ...
28. Maya Deren
Director | Meshes of the Afternoon
Maya Deren came to the USA in 1922 as Eleanora Derenkowsky. Together with her father Solomon Derenkowsky, a psychiatrist, and her mother Maria Fidler, an artist, she fled the pogroms organized by the Bolsheviks against the Jews. She studied journalism and political science at the Syracuse ...
29. Park Chan-wook
Director | Oldeuboi
Park Chan-wook was born on August 23, 1963 in Seoul, South Korea. He is a producer and director, known for Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016) and Decision to Leave (2022). He is married to Eun-hee Kim. They have one child.
Oldeuboi (2003) 10/10 Ah-ga-ssi (2016) 8/10 Bakjwi (2009) 8/10
30. Denis Villeneuve
Director | Dune
Denis Villeneuve is a French Canadian film director and writer. He was born in 1967, in Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. He started his career as a filmmaker at the National Film Board of Canada. He is best known for his feature films Arrival (2016), Sicario (2015), Prisoners (2013), Enemy (2013), ...
Prisoners (2013) 8/10 Sicario (2015) 8/10 Arrival (2016) 8/10 Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 8/10
31. 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 ...
32. Guy Maddin
Director | The Heart of the World
Guy Maddin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Herdis Maddin (a hair-dresser) and Charles "Chas" Maddin (grain clerk and general manager of the Maroons, a Winnipeg hockey team). Maddin studied economics at the University of Winnipeg, working as a bank manager, house painter, and photographic...
33. 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...
34. Frantisek Vlácil
Director | Marketa Lazarová
Frantisek Vlácil was born on February 19, 1924 in Cesky Tesin, Moravian-Silesian, Czech Republic. He was a director and writer, known for Marketa Lazarová (1967), The Valley of the Bees (1968) and Adelheid (1969). He died on January 28, 1999 in Prague, Czech Republic.
35. Abbas Kiarostami
Writer | Copie conforme
Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career ...
36. Aleksandr Sokurov
Director | Russkiy kovcheg
He was born with a disability because of an anatomic defect of his leg, in 1951 in Podorvikha village in Siberian Russia. His father was a Red Army veteran of WW2. One of most important contemporary filmmakers, Sokurov worked extensively in television and later graduated from the prestigious film ...
Tell Your Friends