The 100 Best Filmmakers

1. Akira Kurosawa

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...

Films seen - 26 The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945); No Regrets for Our Youth (1946); One Wonderful Sunday (1947); Drunken Angel (1948); Stray Dog (1949); The Quiet Duel (1949); Rashômon (1950); Scandal (1950); The Idiot (1951); Ikiru (1952); Seven Samurai (1954); I Live in Fear (1955); Throne of Blood (1957); The Lower Depths (1957); The Hidden Fortress (1958); The Bad Sleep Well (1960); Yojimbo (1961); Sanjurô (1962); High and Low (1963); Red Beard (1965); Dodes'ka-den (1970); Dersu Uzala (1975); Kagemusha (1980); Ran (1985); Rhapsody in August (1991); Madadayo (1993)

2. 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 ...

Films seen - 37 A Straightforward Boy (1929); I Graduated, But... (1929); Days of Youth (1929); Fighting Friends (1929); Walk Cheerfully (1930); That Night's Wife (1930); I Flunked, But... (1930); The Lady and the Beard (1931); Tokyo Chorus (1931); I Was Born, But... (1932); Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth (1932); Woman of Tokyo (1933); Dragnet Girl (1933); Passing Fancy (1933); A Story of Floating Weeds (1934); A Mother Should Be Loved (1934); An Inn in Tokyo (1935); The Only Son (1936); Kagamijishi (1936); What Did the Lady Forget (1937); Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941); There Was a Father (1942); The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947); A Hen in the Wind (1948); Late Spring (1949); The Munekata Sisters (1950); Early Summer (1951); Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952); Tokyo Story (1953); Earyl Spring (1956); Tokyo Twilight (1957); Equinox Flower (1958); Floating Weeds (1959); Good Morning (1959); Late Autumn (1960); The End of Summer (1961); An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

3. Hayao Miyazaki

Writer | Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi

Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's greatest animation directors. The entertaining plots, compelling characters, and breathtaking visuals in his films have earned him international renown from critics as well as public recognition within Japan.

Miyazaki started his career in 1963 as an animator at the ...

Films seen - 11 The Castle of Cagliostro (1979); Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984); Castle in the Sky (1986); My Neighbour Totoro (1988); Kiki's Delivery Service (1989); Porco Rosso (1992); Princess Mononoke (1997); Spirited Away (2001); Howl's Moving Castle (2004); Ponyo (2008); The Wind Rises (2013)

4. Asghar Farhadi

Writer | Forooshande

Asghar Farhadi was born in 1972 in Iran. He became interested in cinema in his teenage years and started his filmmaking education by joining the Youth Cinema Society of Esfahan in 1986 where he made 8mm and 16mm short films. He received his Bachelors in Theater from University of Tehran's School of...

Films seen - 3 About Elly (2009); A Separation (2011); Everybody Knows (2018)

5. 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 ...

Films seen - 8 Phantom (1922); Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922); The Last Laugh (1924); Tartuffe (1925); Faust (1926); Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927); City Girl (1930); Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

6. 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 ...

Films seen - 4 Nail in the Boot (1931); The Cranes are Flying (1957); Letter Never Sent (1959); I Am Cuba (1964)

7. Satoshi Kon

Writer | Tôkyô goddofâzâzu

Satoshi Kon was born in 1963. He studied at the Musashino College of the Arts. He began his career as a Manga artist. He then moved to animation and worked as a background artist on many films (including Roujin Z (1991) by 'Katsuhiro Otomo'). Then, in 1995, he wrote an episode of the anthology film ...

Films seen - 4 Perfect Blue (1998); Millenium Actress (2001); Tokyo Godfathers (2003); Paprika (2006)

8. Terence Davies

Writer | Distant Voices, Still Lives

Terence Davies was born on November 10, 1945 in Liverpool, England, UK. He was a writer and director, known for Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The House of Mirth (2000) and Benediction (2021). He died on October 7, 2023 in Mistley, Essex, England, UK.

Films seen - 11 Children (1976); Madonna and Child (1980); Death and Transfiguration (1983); Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988); The Long Day Closes (1992); The Neon Bible (1995); The House of Mirth (2000); Of Time and the City (2008); The Deep Blue Sea (2011); Sunset Song (2015); A Quiet Passion (2016)

9. Sadao Yamanaka

Writer | Kuchibue o fuku bushi

The director and screenwriter Sadao Yamanaka (1909-1938) is a key figure in the development of early Japanese cinema. Although he made 27 films over a six-year period, only three of them survived in nearly complete form: Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (1935), Humanity and Paper Balloons...

Films seen - 3 The Million Ryo Pot (1935); Priest of Darkness (1936); Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)

10. 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 ...

Films seen - 13 The Water Magician (1933); Osaka Elegy (1936); The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939); Utamaro and His Five Women (1946); Miss Oyu (1951); The Life of Oharu (1952); A Geisha (1953); Ugetsu (1953); The Crucified Lovers (1954); Sansho the Bailiff (1954); The Woman in the Rumor (1954); Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955); Street of Shame (1956)

11. 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 ...

Films seen - 14 The Seafarers (1953); Fear and Desire (1953); Killer's Kiss (1955); The Killing (1956); Paths of Glory (1957); Spartacus (1960); Lolita (1962); Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); A Clockwork Orange (1971); Barry Lyndon (1975); The Shining (1980); Full Metal Jacket (1987); Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

12. Henri-Georges Clouzot

Writer | Le salaire de la peur

Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film The Raven (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. He shot to ...

Films seen - 7 The Raven (1943); Quay of the Goldsmiths (1947); The Wages of Fear (1953); Diabolique (1955); The Mystery of Picasso (1956); The Spies (1957); The Truth (1960)

13. Kaneto Shindô

Writer | Ichimai no hagaki

Kaneto Shindô was born on April 22, 1912 in Hiroshima, Japan. He was a writer and director, known for Postcard (2010), The Naked Island (1960) and A Last Note (1995). He was married to Nobuko Otowa and Miyo Shindo. He died on May 29, 2012 in Hiroshima, Japan.

Films seen - 3 The Naked Island (1960); Onibaba (1964); Kuroneko (1968)

14. Claire Denis

Director | High Life

The films of Claire Denis frequently explore the fragile connections between people and the ways in which the most seemingly inconsequential relationship can have life-changing effects. At the heart of Denis' cinema is a fascination with the delights and difficulties of belonging and otherness, the...

Films seen - 13 Chocolate (1988); No Fear, No Die (1990); I Can't Sleep (1994); Nenette and Boni (1996); Beau travail (1999); Trouble Every Day (2001); Friday Night (2002); The Intruder (2004); 35 Shots of Rum (2008); White Material (2009); Bastards (2013); Let the Sun Shine In (2017); High Life (2018)

15. Masaki Kobayashi

Director | Seppuku

Masaki Kobayashi was born on February 14, 1916 in Hokkaido, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Harakiri (1962), Samurai Rebellion (1967) and The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961). He died on October 4, 1996 in Tokyo, Japan.

Films seen - 7 The Thick-Walled Room (1956); I Will Buy You (1956); No Greater Love (1959); Road to Eternity (1959); A Soldier's Prayer (1961); Harakiri (1962); Samurai Rebellion (1967)

16. 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 ...

Films seen - 7 The Colossus of Rhodes (1961); A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); Duck, You Sucker! (1971); Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

17. Jacques Becker

Writer | Le trou

His interest in films was stimulated by a meeting with King Vidor, who offered him employment in the US as actor and assistant director. However, he remained in France and became assistant to Jean Renoir, a friend of the family, during that director's peak period (1932-39). In 1934 he ventured ...

Films seen - 4 Edward and Caroline (1951), Golden Helmet (1952); Hands Off the Loot (1954); The Hole (1960)

18. Satyajit Ray

Writer | Pather Panchali

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Late Sukumar Ray was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie ...

Films seen - 7 Pather Panchali (1955); Aparajito (1956); The Music Room (1958); Apur Sansar (1959); The Lonely Wife (1964); The Hero (1966); The Distant Thunder (1973)

19. 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, ...

Films seen - 7 A Generation (1955); Kanal (1957); Ashes and Diamonds (1958); Love at Twenty (1962); Man of Marble (1977); Without Anesthesia (1978); Man of Iron (1981)

20. 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 ...

Films seen - 9 The Parson's Widow (1920); Once Upon a Time (1922); The Bride of Glomdal (1926); The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928); Vampyr (1932); Day of Wrath (1943); Two People (1945); Ordet (1955); Gertrud (1964)

21. 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 ...

Films seen - 9 Story of a Love Affair (1950); Il Grido (1957); L'avventura (1960); La notte (1961); L'eclisse (1962); Red Desert (1964); Blowup (1966); Zabriskie Point (1970); The Passenger (1975)

22. 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 ...

Films seen - 13 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945); Gentleman's Agreement (1947); The Sea of Grass (1947); Panic in the Streets (1950); A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); On the Waterfront (1954); East of Eden (1955); A Face in the Crowd (1957); Wild River (1960); Splendor in the Grass (1961); America America (1963); The Visitors (1972); The Last Tycoon (1976)

23. 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 (...

Films seen - 24 Port of Call (1948); Sawdust and Tinsel (1953); Summer with Monika (1953); Smiles of a Summer Night (1955); Dreams (1955); Wild Strawberries (1957); The Seventh Seal (1957); The Magician (1958); The Virgin Spring (1960); Through a Glass Darkly (1961); Winter Light (1962); The Silence (1963); Persona (1966); Shame (1968); Hour of the Wolf (1968); The Touch (1971); Cries and Whispers (1972); Scenes from a Marriage (1973); The Serpent's Egg (1977); Autumn Sonata (1978); From the Life of the Marionettes (1980); Fanny and Alexander (1982); Karin's Face (1984); Saraband (2003)

24. 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 ...

Films seen - 12 Double Indemnity (1944); The Lost Weekend (1945); Sunset Blvd. (1950); Ace in the Hole (1951); Stalag 17 (1953); The Seven Year Itch (1955); Witness for the Prosecution (1957); The Spirit of St. Louis (1957); Some Like It Hot (1959); The Apartment (1960); The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970); The Front Page (1974)

25. Kim Ki-duk

Writer | Bin-jip

He studied fine arts in Paris in 1990-1992. In 1993 he won the award for Best Screenplay from the Educational Institute of Screenwriting with "A Painter and A Criminal Condemned to Death". After two more screenplay awards, he made his directorial debut with Crocodile (1996) ("Crocodile"). Then he ...

Films seen - 10 Crocodile (1996); Birdcage Inn (1998); The Isle (2000); Address Unknown (2001); Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003); 3-Iron (2004); Time (2006); Arirang (2011); Pietá (2012); Moebius (2013)

26. 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 ...

Films seen - 10 In Which We Serve (1942); Brief Encounter (1945); Great Expectations (1946); Oliver Twist (1948); Summertime (1955); The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957); Lawrence of Arabia (1962); Doctor Zhivago (1965); Ryan's Daughter (1970); A Passage to India (1984)

27. 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. ...

Films seen - 4 Pusher (1996); Drive (2011); Only God Forgives (2013); The Neon Demon (2016)

28. Fernando Meirelles

Director | The Constant Gardener

Fernando Meirelles was born in a middle class family in São Paulo City, Brazil.

He studied architecture at the university of São Paulo. At the same time he developed an interest in filmmaking. With a group of friends he started producing experimental videos and video art. They won a huge number of ...

Films seen - 3 City of God (2002); The Constant Gardener (2005); Blindness (2008)

29. Glauber Rocha

Director | Terra em Transe

He studied Law. He also directed theatre pieces, wrote movie criticisms and took part in the creation and development of the 'cinema novo' movement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, becoming its theoretical leader and first embassador in Europe. After "Barravento (1962)", a trilogy of films and "Antonio ...

Films seen - 3 Black God, White Devil (1964); Entranced Earth (1967); Antonio das Mortes (1969)

30. Sam Wood

Director | A Night at the Opera

Following a two-year apprenticeship under Cecil B. DeMille as assistant director, Samuel Grosvenor Wood had the good fortune to have assigned to him two of the biggest stars at Paramount during their heyday: Wallace Reid (between 1919 and 1920) and Gloria Swanson (from 1921 to 1923). By the time ...

Films seen - 3 A Night at the Opera (1935); A Day at the Races (1937); Gone with the Wind (1939)

31. 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 ...

Films seen - 18 Un chien andalou (1929); L'âge d'or (1930); Land Without Bread (1933); The Young and the Damned (1950); This Strange Passion (1953); Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1954); Nazarín (1959); The Young One (1960); Viridiana (1961); The Exterminating Angel (1962); The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964); Simon of the Desert (1965); Belle de jour (1967); The Milky Way (1969); Tristana (1970); The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972); The Phantom of Liberty (1974); That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

32. 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...

Films seen - 13 Flunky, Work Hard! (1931); No Blood Relation (1932); Apart From You (1933); Every-Night Dreams (1933); Street Without End (1934); Repast (1951); Late Chrysanthemums (1954); Sound of the Mountain (1954); Floating Clouds (1955); Sudden Rain (1956); Flowing (1956); When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960); Daughter, Wife, Mother (1960)

33. 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 ...

Films seen - 6 Alice in the Cities (1974); Kings of the Road (1976); The American Friend (1977); The State of Things (1982); Paris, Texas (1984); Wings of Desire (1987)

34. Jafar Panahi

Director | Taxi

Jafar Panahi (Born 11 July 1960) is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly identified with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an assistant director for fellow Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved ...

Films seen - 5 The White Balloon (1995); The Circle (2000); Crimson Gold (2003); Offside (2006); Taxi (2015)

35. Kevin Macdonald

Director | The Last King of Scotland

Kevin Macdonald was born on October 28, 1967 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is a director and producer, known for The Last King of Scotland (2006), The Mauritanian (2021) and How I Live Now (2013). He has been married to Tatiana Macdonald since July 2, 1999. They have three children.

Films seen - 5 Touching the Void (2003); The Last King of Scotland (2006); State of Play (2009); The Eagle (2011); Marley (2012)

36. Frederick Wiseman

Director | National Gallery

Born in 1930, Wiseman is a Cambridge, Massachusetts resident and member of the Massachusetts Bar Association who turned to filmmaking in 1967, after years as an instructor and/or researcher at Boston University, Brandeis University, and Harvard. In 1970 he founded Zipporah Films, Inc., which ...

Films seen - 5 High School (1968); Welfare (1975); Model (1980); At Berkeley (2013); Ex Libris (2017)

37. 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. ...

Films seen - 17 Destiny (1921); Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922); Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924); Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge (1924); Metropolis (1927); Woman in the Moon (1929); M (1931); The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933); Fury (1936); You Only Live Once (1937); Ministry of Fear (1944); Clash by Night (1952); The Big Heat (1953); Moonfleet (1955); Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1959); The Indian Tomb (1959); The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960)

38. 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.

Films seen - 4 Damnation (1988); Sátantángó (1994); Werckmeister Harmonies (2000); The Turin Horse (2011)

39. Sam Mendes

Producer | 1917

Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on August 1, 1965 in Reading, England, UK to parents James Peter Mendes, a retired university lecturer, and Valerie Helene Mendes, an author who writes children's books. Their marriage didn't last long, James divorced Sam's mother in 1970 when Sam was just 5-...

Films seen - 7 American Beauty (1999); Road to Perdition (2002); Jarhead (2005); Revolutionary Road (2008); Away We Go (2009); Skyfall (2012); Spectre (2015)

40. 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.

Films seen - 7 Joint Security Area (2000); Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002); Oldboy (2003); Lady Vengeance (2005); I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay (2006); Thirst (2009); The Handmaiden (2016)

41. 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 ...

Films seen - 7 The Silence of the Sea (1949); Bob le flambeur (1956); Le doulos (1962); Magnet of Doom (1963); Le samouraï (1967); Army of Shadows (1969); The Red Circle (1970)

42. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Writer | All About Eve

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount ...

Films seen - 10 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); A Letter to Three Wives (1949); No Way Out (1950), All About Eve (1950); 5 Fingers (1952); Julius Caesar (1953); Guys and Dolls (1955); Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); Cleopatra (1963); Sleuth (1972)

43. 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 ...

Films seen - 10 Black Peter (1964); Audition (1964); Loves of a Blonde (1965); The Firemen's Ball (1967); Visions of Eight (1973); One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975); Hair (1979); Ragtime (1981); Amadeus (1984); The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)

44. Kon Ichikawa

Director | Inugami-ke no ichizoku

Kon Ichikawa has been influenced by artists as diverse as Walt Disney and Jean Renoir, and his films cover a wide spectrum of moods, from the comic to the overwhelmingly ironic and even the perverse. Ichikawa began his career as a cartoonist, and this influence is apparent in his skillful use of ...

Films seen - 6 Fires on the Plain (1959); Alone Across the Pacific (1963); An Actor's Revenge (1963); Tokyo Olympiad (1965); Visions of Eight (1973); The Burmese Harp (1985)

45. Frank Darabont

Writer | The Shawshank Redemption

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France, the son of Hungarian parents who had fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Brought to America as an infant, he settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High ...

Films seen - 3 The Shawshank Redemption (1994); The Green Mile (1999); The Mist (2007)

46. Robert Hamer

Director | Kind Hearts and Coronets

Robert James Hamer was born in 1911 along with his twin sister Barbara, the son of Owen Dyke Hamer, a bank clerk, and his wife, Annie Grace Brickell. He was educated at Cambridge University where he wrote some poetry and was published in a collection 'Contemporaries and Their Maker', along with the...

Films seen - 3 Dead of Night (1945); Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945); Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

47. Robert Rossen

Writer | The Hustler

Robert Rossen was born on March 16, 1908 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The Hustler (1961), All the King's Men (1949) and Alexander the Great (1956). He was married to Sarah (Sue) Siegel. He died on February 18, 1966 in New York City, New York, USA.

Films seen - 3 Body and Soul (1947); All the King's Men (1949); The Hustler (1961)

48. Walter Salles

Director | Central do Brasil

Walter Salles was born on April 12, 1956 in Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is a director and producer, known for Central Station (1998), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Terra Estrangeira (1995). He is married to Maria Klabin. They have one child.

Films seen - 3 Central Station (1998); The Motorcycle Diaries (2004); Linha de Passe (2008)

49. Dziga Vertov

Director | Chelovek s kino-apparatom

Dziga Vertov was born on January 2, 1896 in Bialystok, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire [now Podlaskie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Three Songs About Lenin (1934) and The Sixth Part of the World (1926). He was married to Elizaveta Svilova. He ...

Films seen - 3 The Eleventh Year (1928); Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Enthusiasm (1931)

50. Jacques Tourneur

Director | Cat People

Born in Paris in 1904, Tourneur went to Hollywood with his father, director Maurice Tourneur around 1913. He started out as a script clerk and editor for his father, then graduated to such jobs as directing shorts (often with the pseudonym Jack Turner), both in France and America. He was hired to ...

Films seen - 5 Cat People (1942); I Walked with a Zombie (1943); Out of the Past (1947); Circle of Danger (1951); Night of the Demon (1957)

51. James Whale

Director | Bride of Frankenstein

James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his four classic horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He also directed films in other genres, including what is ...

Films seen - 5 Frankenstein (1931); The Old Dark House (1932); The Invisible Man (1933); By Candlelight (1933), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

52. 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 ...

Films seen - 5 Rome, Open City (1945); Paisan (1946); Stromboli (1950); The Flowers of St. Francis (1950); Journey to Italy (1954)

53. Alexander Mackendrick

Writer | The Man in the White Suit

One of the most distinguished (if frequently overlooked) directors ever to emerge from the British film industry, Alexander Mackendrick, was in fact born in the US (to Scottish parents), but grew up in his native Scotland, where he studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He started out as a ...

Films seen - 5 Whisky Galore! (1949); The Man in the White Suit (1951); Mandy (1952); The Ladykillers (1955); Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

54. James Ivory

Writer | Call Me by Your Name

The main part of his few movies were filmed in the quarter of a century in which he worked closely together with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the German writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. His first films are all set in India and are very much influenced by the style of Satyajit Ray and Jean ...

Films seen - 7 Heat and Dust (1983); The Bostonians (1984); A Room with a View (1985); Maurice (1987); Howards End (1992); The Remains of the Day (1993); Surviving Picasso (1996)

55. 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...

Films seen - 11 Reservoir Dogs (1992); Pulp Fiction (1994); Four Rooms (1995); Jackie Brown (1997); Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003); Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004); Death Proof (2007); Inglorious Basterds (2009); Django Unchained (2012); The Hateful Eight (2015); Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

56. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Director | Un long dimanche de fiançailles

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. Thus he started directing TV commercials and video clips (such as Julien Clerc in 1984). At the same time he met designer/...

Films seen - 6 Delicatessen (1991); The City of Lost Children (1995); Alien: Resurrection (1997); Amélie (2001); A Very Long Engagement (2004); Micmacs (2009)

57. Marcel Carné

Director | Le quai des brumes

Marcel Carné, the son of a cabinet maker, entered the movies as the assistant of Jacques Feyder. At the age of 25 he directed his first movie Jenny (1936). Colaborating with the writer Jacques Prévert, the decorator Alexandre Trauner, the musician and composer Maurice Jaubert and the actor Jean ...

Films seen - 6 Bizarre, Bizarre (1937); Port of Shadows (1938); Hôtel du Nord (1938); Daybreak (1939); The Devil's Envoys (1942); Children of Paradise (1945)

58. 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, ...

Films seen - 6 Closely Watched Trains (1966); Capricious Summer (1968); Seclusion Near a Forest (1976); Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1979); Cutting It Short (1981); I Served the King of England (2006)

59. Noah Baumbach

Writer | The Squid and the Whale

Born in Brooklyn in 1969 Noah Baumbach is the son of two film critics, Georgia Brown and Jonathan Baumbach (also a writer). His studies at Vassar College were the subject of his first film (made as he was 26 years old), Kicking and Screaming (1995). His second major picture, made ten years later, ...

Films seen - 4 Kicking and Screaming (1995); The Squid and the Whale (2005); Greenberg (2010); Frances Ha (2012)

60. Alan Parker

Director | Evita

The son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter, Alan Parker was a London advertising copywriter in the 1960s and early 1970s with Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP), an ad agency. He formed a partnership with David Puttnam as his producer (Puttnam had been a ...

Films seen - 4 Bugsy Malone (1976); Midnight Express (1978); Mississippi Burning (1988); The Commitments (1991)

61. 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 ...

Films seen - 34 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927); The Farmer's Wife (1928); Blackmail (1929); The Manxman (1929); Murder! (1930); Rich and Strange (1931); The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934); The 39 Steps (1935); The Lady Vanishes (1938); Rebecca (1940); Foreign Correspondent (1940); Suspicion (1941); Saboteur (1942); Shadow of a Doubt (1943); Spellbound (1945); Notorious (1946); Rope (1948); Stage Fright (1950); Strangers on a Train (1951); Dial M for Murder (1954); Rear Window (1954); To Catch a Thief (1955); The Trouble with Harry (1955); The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); Wrong Man (1956); Vertigo (1958); North by Northwest (1959); Psycho (1960); The Birds (1963); Marnie (1964); Torn Curtain (1966); Topaz (1969); Frenzy (1972); Family Plot (1976)

62. 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 ...

Films seen - 24 The Mischief Makers (1957); The 400 Blows (1959); Shoot the Piano Player (1960); The Army Game (1960); Jules and Jim (1962); Antoine and Colette (1962); Love at Twenty (1962); The Soft Skin (1964); Fahrenheit 451 (1966); Stolen Kisses (1968); The Bride Wore Black (1968); Mississippi Mermaid (1969); The Wild Child (1970); Bed and Board (1970); Two English Girls (1971); Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972); Day for Night (1973); The Story of Adele H. (1975); Small Change (1976); The Green Room (1978); Love on the Run (1979); The Last Metro (1980); The Woman Next Door (1981); Confidentially Yours (1983)

63. 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, ...

Films seen - 13 The Sign of Leo (1959); A Modern Coed (1966); The Collector (1967); My Night at Maud's (1969); Claire's Knee (1970); Chloe in the Afternoon (1972); The Marquise of O (1976); The Green Ray (1986); A Tale of Springtime (1990); A Winter's Tale (1992); A Tale of Summer (1996); A Tale of Autumn (1998); Romance of Astree and Celadon (2007)

64. Christopher Nolan

Writer | Tenet

Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the ...

Films seen - 9 Memento (2000); Insomnia (2002); Batman Begins (2005); The Prestige (2006); The Dark Knight (2008); Inception (2010); The Dark Knight Rises (2012); Interstellar (2014); Dunkirk (2017)

65. Fred Zinnemann

Director | A Man for All Seasons

Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do. He became involved in European filmaking for a short time before going to America to...

Films seen - 7 People on Sunday (1930); Redes (1936); High Noon (1952); From Here to Eternity (1953); Oklahoma! (1955); A Man for All Seasons (1966); The Day of the Jackal (1973)

66. Errol Morris

Director | The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

His documentaries helped spur a rebirth of non-fiction film in the 80s & garnered wide critical success. But until 2003's "The Fog of War," Morris was shunned by the Academy Awards.

Morris' first two films won much acclaim (Gates of Heaven (1978) and Vernon, Florida (1981)). In the second movie, ...

Films seen - 5 The Thin Blue Line (1988); Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999); Standard Operating Procedure (2008); Tabloid (2010); The Unknown Known (2013)

67. Tod Browning

Director | Dracula

Belonging to a well-situated family, Charles Browning fell in love at the age of 16 with a dancer of a circus. Following her began his itinerary of being clown, jockey and director of a variety theater which ended when he met D.W. Griffith and became an actor. He made his debut in Intolerance (1916)...

Films seen - 5 The Unholy Three (1925); The Unknown (1927); Dracula (1931); Freaks (1932); The Devil-Doll (1936)

68. Nicolas Roeg

Director | Don't Look Now

When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's ...

Films seen - 5 Performance (1970); Walkabout (1971); Don't Look Now (1973); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Heart of Darkness (1993)

69. Howard Hawks

Director | Rio Bravo

What do the classic films Scarface (1932), Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959) have in...

Films seen - 13 Scarface (1932); Bringing Up Baby (1938); Only Angels Have Wings (1939); His Girl Friday (1940); Sergeant York (1941); The Outlaw (1943); To Have and Have Not (1944); The Big Sleep (1946); Red River (1948); The Thing from Another World (1951); Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1953); Rio Bravo (1959); El Dorado (1966)

70. Mike Nichols

Director | The Graduate

He, along with the other members of the "Compass Players" including Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, Joyce Hiller Piven and Edward Asner helped start the famed "Second City Improv" company. They used the games taught to them by fellow cast mate, Paul Sills 's mother, Viola Spolin. He later ...

Films seen - 8 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966); The Graduate (1967); Silkwood (1983); Working Girl (1988); The Birdcage (1996); Primary Colors (1998); Closer (2004); Charlie Wilson's War (2007)

71. 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 ...

Films seen - 11 Too Much Johnson (1938), Citizen Kane (1941); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); The Stranger (1946); The Lady from Shanghai (1947); The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952); Mr. Akadin (1956); Touch of Evil (1958); The Trial (1962); Chimes at Midnight (1965); F for Fake (1973)

72. 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...

Films seen - 11 Jezebel (1938); Wuthering Heights (1939); Mrs. Miniver (1942); The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); The Heiress (1949); Roman Holiday (1953); Friendly Persuasion (1956); The Big Country (1958); Ben-Hur (1959); The Children's Hour (1961); The Collector (1965)

73. 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.

Films seen - 9 Stranger Than Paradise (1984); Down by Law (1986); Mystery Train (1989); Dead Man (1995); Coffee and Cigarettes (2003); Broken Flowers (2005); The Limits of Control (2009); Only Lovers Left Alive (2013); Paterson (2016)

74. Terry Jones

Writer | The Meaning of Life

Terry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of Dilys Louisa (Newnes), a homemaker, and Alick George Parry Jones, a bank clerk. His older brother is production designer Nigel Jones. His grandparents were involved in the entertainment business, having managed the local Amateur Operatic ...

Films seen - 3 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975); Life of Brian (1979); The Meaning of Life (1983)

75. Lewis Milestone

Director | All Quiet on the Western Front

Lewis Milestone, a clothing manufacturer's son, was born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), raised in Odessa (Ukraine) and educated in Belgium and Berlin (where he studied engineering). He was fluent in both German and Russian and an avid reader. Milestone had an affinity for the theatre from an early ...

Films seen - 3 All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Ocean's Eleven (1960); Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

76. 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. ...

Films seen - 3 In Our Time (1982); A Brighter Summer Day (1991); Yi Yi: A One and a Two (2000)

77. Kihachi Okamoto

Director | Nikudan

Okamoto belonged to what one colleague called "the generation where most of them got killed": the leagues of university graduates who were drafted into and sacrificed to the last years of Japan's war in the South Pacific. Okamoto was drafted during the very worst of it, in 1943, but almost alone ...

Films seen - 3 Samurai Assassin (1965); The Sword of Doom (1966); Red Lion (1969)

78. 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, ...

Films seen - 3 How to Be Loved (1963); The Saragossa Manuscript (1965); The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973)

79. Leni Riefenstahl

Producer | Das blaue Licht - Eine Berglegende aus den Dolomiten

Leni Riefenstahl's show-biz experience began with an experiment: she wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention of film director Arnold Fanck, subsequently starring in some of his mountaineering pictures. With...

Films seen - 3 Triumph of the Will (1935); Olympia Part 1. Festival of Nations (1938); Olympia Part 2. Festival of Beauty (1938)

80. 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.

Films seen - 3 Hunger (2008); Shame (2011); 12 Years a Slave (2013)

81. 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.

Films seen - 3 The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), Z (1969), Missing (1982)

82. Victor Sjöström

Actor | Smultronstället

Victor Sjöström was born on September 20, 1879, and is the undisputed father of Swedish film, ranking as one of the masters of world cinema. His influence lives on in the work of Ingmar Bergman and all those directors, both Swedish and international, influenced by his work and the works of ...

Films seen - 16 The Gardener (1912); Margaret Day (1913); The Price of Betrayal (1915); Kiss of Death (1916); A Man There Was (1917); The Outlaw and His Wife (1918); Sons of Ingmar (1919); A Lover in Pawn (1920); The Monastery of Sendomir (1920); The Phantom Carriage (1921); Love's Crucible (1922); He Who Gets Slapped (1924); The Scarlet Letter (1926); The Divine Woman (1928); The Wind (1928); Markurells of Wadköping (1931)

83. 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...

Films seen - 10 Alien³ (1992); Se7en (1995); The Game (1997); Fight Club (1999); Panic Room (2002); Zodiac (2007); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); The Social Network (2010); The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011); Gone Girl (2014)

84. 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 ...

Films seen - 10 Le bled (1929); Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932); Toni (1935); A Day in the Country (1936); The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936); Grand Illusion (1937); The Human Beast (1938); The Rules of the Game (1939); Swamp Water (1941); The River (1951)

85. Frank Capra

Director | It's a Wonderful Life

One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you ...

Films seen - 11 The Matinee Idol (1928); The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933); It Happened One Night (1934); Lost Horizon (1937); You Can't Take it With You (1938); Mr. Smith Goes to Wasington (1939); Why We Fight: Divide and Conquer (1943); Arsenic and Old Lace (1944); It's a Wonderful Life (1946); State of the Union (1948); A Hole in the Head (1959)

86. 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).

Films seen - 11 Tale of Cinema (2005); The Day He Arrives (2011); In Another Country (2012); Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013); Our Sunhi (2013); Hill of Freedom (2014); Right Now, Wrong Then (2015); Yourself and Yours (2016); On the Beach at Night Alone (2017); Claire's Camera (2017); Hotel by the River (2018)

87. 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, ...

Films seen - 16 Straight Shooting (1917); 3 Bad Men (1926); Judge Priest (1934); Stagecoach (1939); The Grapes of Wrath (1940); How Green Was My Valley (1941); They Were Expendable (1945); My Darling Clementine (1946); Fort Apache (1948); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949); Rio Grande (1950); The Quiet Man (1952); The Searchers (1956); Two Rode Together (1961); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); How the West Was Won (1962)

88. Peter Weir

Director | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Peter Weir was born on August 21, 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a director and writer, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Way Back (2010) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Wendy Stites since 1966. They have two children.

Films seen - 8 Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975); The Last Wave (1977); Gallipoli (1981); The Year of Living Dangerously (1982); Witness (1985); Dead Poets Society (1989); The Truman Show (1998); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

89. Zhangke Jia

Producer | Jiang hu er nü

Zhangke Jia was born on May 24, 1970 in Fenyang, Shanxi, China. He is a producer and director, known for Jiang hu er nü (2018), A Touch of Sin (2013) and Mountains May Depart (2015). He has been married to Tao Zhao since January 7, 2012.

Films seen - 8 The Pickpocket (1997); Platform (2000); Unknown Pleasures (2002); The World (2004); Still Life (2006); 24 City (2008); I Wish I Knew (2010); A Touch of Sin (2013)

90. Joseph Losey

Director | The Servant

Belonging to an important family clan in Wisconsin, Joseph Losey studied philosophy but was always interested in theater and thus worked together with Bertolt Brecht. After directing some shorts for MGM, he made his first important film, The Boy with Green Hair (1948), for RKO. While he was filming ...

Films seen - 4 The Damned (1962); The Servant (1963); The Go-Between (1970); Mr. Klein (1976)

91. Roy Andersson

Director | En kärlekshistoria

Roy Arne Lennart Andersson is a Swedish film director, best known for his distinctive style of absurdist humor and melancholic depictions of human life. His personal style is characterized by long takes, and stiff caricaturing of Swedish culture and grotesque. Over his career Andersson earned ...

Films seen - 4 The White Game (1968); A Swedish Love Story (1970); Songs from the Second Floor (2000); You, the Living (2007)

92. Jan Troell

Director | Här har du ditt liv

Jan Troell was born on July 23, 1931 in Limhamn, Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden. He is a director and cinematographer, known for Here Is Your Life (1966), The Emigrants (1971) and Il capitano (1991). He is married to Agneta Ulfsäter-Troell. They have one child.

Films seen - 10 Uppehåll i myrlandet (1965); Here's Your Life (1966); Who Saw Hime Die? (1968); The Emigrants (1971); The New Land (1972); Bang! (1977); Flight of the Eagle (1982); Il Capitano: A Swedish Requiem (1991); Everlasting Moments (2008); The Last Sentence (2012)

93. 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 ...

Films seen - 10 Cheerful Wind (1981); The Boys from Fengkuei (1983); A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985); Dust in the Wind (1987); A City of Sadness (1989); Good Men, Good Women (1995); Flowers of Shanghai (1998); Café Lumiére (2003); Three Times (2005); 10+10 (2011)

94. 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 ...

Films seen - 10 As Tears Go By (1988); Days of Being Wild (1990); Chungking Express (1994); Ashes of Time Redux (1994); Fallen Angels (1995); Happy Together (1997); In the Mood for Love (2000); 2046 (2004); My Blueberry Nights (2007); The Grandmaster (2013)

95. Erich von Stroheim

Actor | Sunset Boulevard

Erich von Stroheim was born Erich Oswald Stroheim in 1885, in Vienna, Austria, to Johanna (Bondy), from Prague, and Benno Stroheim, a hatter from Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). His family was Jewish.

After spending some time working in his father's hat factory, he emigrated to America ...

Films seen - 5 Blind Husbands (1919); Foolish Wives (1922); Greed (1924); The Wedding March (1928); Queen Kelly (1929)

96. 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, ...

Films seen - 5 Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948); Caught (1949); Roundabout (1950); House of Pleasures (1952); The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)

97. Peter Bogdanovich

Director | The Last Picture Show

Peter Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe but born in Kingston, New York. He is the son of immigrants fleeing the Nazis, Herma (Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Christian, and his mother was from a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. Peter ...

Films seen - 5 Targets (1968); The Last Picture Show (1971); What's Up, Doc? (1972); Saint Jack (1979); Illegally Yours (1988)

98. Humphrey Jennings

Director | Fires Were Started

Humphrey Jennings, born in 1907, was a writer, set designer, painter, editor and, perhaps most famously, a director of ground-breaking documentary films for the renowned GPO film unit: Listen to Britain (1942), Fires Were Started (1943) and A Diary for Timothy (1945), films that changed the face of...

Films seen - 5 Listen to Britain (1941); The Heart of Britain (1941); Words for Battle (1941); Fires Were Started (1943); The Silent Village (1943)

99. Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Director | Komödianten

Georg Wilhelm Pabst is considered by many to be the greatest director of German cinema, in his era. He was especially appreciated by actors and actresses for the humane way in which he treated them. This was in contrast to some of his contemporaries, such as Arnold Fanck, who have been ...

Films seen - 5 Joyless Street (1925); Diary of a Lost Girl (1929); Pandora's Box (1929); Kameradschaft (1931); Threepenny Opera (1931)

100. Michael Curtiz

Director | Casablanca

Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner...

Films seen - 11 The Kennel Murder Case (1933); Captain Blood (1935); The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936); Angels with Dirty Faces (1938); The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); The Sea Hawk (1940); Casablanca (1942); Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942); Mildred Pierce (1945); We're No Angels (1955); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960)