Directors watchlist
by monkwaits | created - 28 Mar 2013 | updated - 01 Mar 2014 | Public
1. Dusan Makavejev
Director | W.R. - Misterije organizma
Dusan Makavejev is the premier figure in Yugoslavian film history; his films are deeply rooted in his nation's painful postwar experiences and draw on important Yugoslavian cinematic and cultural models. Makavejev's work has violated many political and sexual taboos and invited censorship in dozens...
2. Per Fly
Director | Bænken
Per Fly was accepted to the Danish Film School in 1989. He completed his education in 1993 with the graduation film Room 17. In the following years Per Fly directed, among other films, the short films Sofaholdet (1994), Calling Katherine (1994) and The Little Knight (1997). In 1998, he directed the...
3. Dagur Kári
Director | Voksne mennesker
Dagur Kári was born on December 12, 1973 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for Voksne mennesker (2005), Nói albinói (2003) and The Good Heart (2009).
4. Elia Suleiman
Director | Yadon ilaheyya
Elia Suleiman was born on July 28, 1960 in Nazareth, Israel. He is a director and writer, known for Divine Intervention (2002), It Must Be Heaven (2019) and The Time That Remains (2009). He is married to Yasmine Hamdan.
5. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer | Il Decameron
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...
6. Lina Wertmüller
Writer | Pasqualino Settebellezze
During the 1970s, Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name into the pantheon of Italian cinema with a series of intensely polemical, deeply controversial and wonderfully entertaining films. Among the most politically outspoken and iconoclastic members of the second generation of postwar directors - the ...
7. 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, ...
8. Jan Svankmajer
Director | Otesánek
After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s, Jan Svankmajer started working as a theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after ...
9. Paolo Taviani
Director | La notte di San Lorenzo
Paolo Taviani studied liberal arts at the University of Pisa, becoming interested in the cinema after seeing Roberto Rossellini's Paisan (1946). After writing and directing short films and plays with his brother Vittorio, he made his first feature in 1962. The brothers have continued to work ...
10. 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 ...
11. Chantal Akerman
Director | Les rendez-vous d'Anna
Chantal Akerman was born on June 6, 1950 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for The Meetings of Anna (1978), I, You, He, She (1974) and A Couch in New York (1996). She was married to Sonia Wieder-Atherton. She died on October 5, 2015 in Paris, France.
12. Nanni Moretti
Producer | La stanza del figlio
Nanni Moretti was born on the 19th of August, 1953. He lives in Rome, where since he was a kid he devotes himself to his two passions: cinema and water-polo. In 1970 he also played in water-polo first division in Italy, and in the junior National team. In those years he was also very committed in ...
13. Claude Sautet
Writer | Un coeur en hiver
Claude Sautet was born on February 23, 1924 in Montrouge, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He was a writer and director, known for A Heart in Winter (1992), Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) and The Things of Life (1970). He was married to Graziella Sautet. He died on July 22, 2000 in Paris, ...
14. Ettore Scola
Writer | Una giornata particolare
Ettore Scola was born on May 10, 1931 in Trevico, Campania, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for A Special Day (1977), The Family (1987) and Passion of Love (1981). He was married to Gigliola. He died on January 19, 2016 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
15. 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, ...
16. 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...
17. 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 ...
18. Víctor Erice
Director | Cerrar los ojos
Víctor Erice was born on June 30, 1940 in Karrantza, Vizcaya, País Vasco, Spain. He is a director and writer, known for Close Your Eyes (2023), El Sur (1983) and The Spirit of the Beehive (1973).
19. 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 ...
20. Milcho Manchevski
Director | Pred dozhdot
Milcho Manchevski's acclaimed Before the Rain is considered "one of the greatest debut feature films in the history of cinema" (Annette Insdorf) and "one of the most important films of the decade" (Ann Kibbey). The New York Times included it on its list "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". It won the ...
21. 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 ...
22. 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.
23. 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 ...
24. Bertrand Tavernier
Director | Un dimanche à la campagne
Bertrand Tavernier was the son of Geneviève (Dumond) and René Tavernier, who was a publicist, writer, and president of the French PEN club. He was a law student that preferred write film criticisms. He also wrote a few books about American movies. Then his first film won a few awards in France and ...
25. Bong Joon Ho
Writer | Snowpiercer
Bong Joon-ho is a South Korean filmmaker. The recipient of three Academy Awards, his filmography is characterized by emphasis on social themes, genre-mixing, black humor, and sudden tone shifts. He first became known to audiences and achieved a cult following with his directorial debut film, the ...
26. Patrice Leconte
Director | Ridicule
Patrice Leconte was born on November 12, 1947 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for Ridicule (1996), La fille sur le pont (1999) and Man on the Train (2002).
27. Agnieszka Holland
Director | Pokot
Having graduated from FAMU in Prague film (1971), Agnieszka Holland returned to Poland and began her film career working with Krzysztof Zanussi as assistant director, and Andrzej Wajda as her mentor. Her first feature film was PROVINCIAL ACTORS (1978), one of the flagship pictures of the "cinema of...
28. Kelly Reichardt
Director | Wendy and Lucy
Kelly Reichardt was born and raised in Miami-Dade Country, Florida, to a family of police officers. She had an interest in photography from a very young age. She started by using her father's camera, which he used for photographing crime scenes. She went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in ...
29. Lukas Moodysson
Director | Fucking Åmål
Lukas Moodysson was born on January 17, 1969 in Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden. He is a director and writer, known for Show Me Love (1998), Lilya 4-Ever (2002) and Together (2000). He has been married to Coco Moodysson since 1994. They have three children.
30. Abel Ferrara
Director | Bad Lieutenant
Born in the Bronx, Ferrara started making amateur films on Super 8 in his teens before making his debut with violent exploitation films such as 'Driller Killer' and 'Ms.45'. Good reviews for the latter helped create his cult reputation, leading to larger budgets, studio funding and 'name' actors (...
31. Zack Snyder
Director | 300
Zachary Edward "Zack" Snyder (born March 1, 1966) is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter, best known for action and science fiction films. Snyder made his feature film debut with the 2004 remake Dawn of the Dead and has gone on to be known for his comic book movies and ...
32. 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...
Tell Your Friends