Directores
by rocarock69 | created - 03 Jun 2013 | updated - 26 May 2015 | Public1. Shin'ichirô Watanabe
Writer | The Animatrix
Shin'ichirô Watanabe was born on May 24, 1965 in Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan. He is a writer and director, known for The Animatrix (2003), Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) and Cowboy Bebop (1998).
2. Stan Brakhage
Director | The Loom
Stan Brakhage was born on January 14, 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was a director and cinematographer, known for The Loom (1986), The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him (2000) and Visions in Meditation (1990). He was married to Marilyn Jull and Jane Wodening. He died on March 9, 2003 in ...
3. Bertrand Bonello
Writer | Nocturama
Bertrand Bonello was born on September 11, 1968 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. He is a writer and director, known for Nocturama (2016), House of Tolerance (2011) and The Beast (2023).
4. Peter Watkins
Director | The War Game
Peter Watkins began his career in advertising as an assistant producer and turned to amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. In the mid-'60s he was commissioned by BBC-TV to make two feature-length docudramas incorporating a quasi-newsreel style and nonprofessional actors. The second of these, The ...
5. Harun Farocki
Director | Memories
The German film director, screenwriter and media artist Harun Farocki was born on the 9th January 1944 in Nový Jicín [Neutitschein], at that time a part of Czechoslovakia annexed by the Third Reich. He was the son of an immigrated Indian doctor and a German woman. Farocki first studied Theatre, ...
6. Makoto Shinkai
Writer | Suzume no Tojimari
Makoto Shinkai is a Japanese director, writer, producer, animator, editor, cinematographer, voice actor, manga artist and former graphic designer.
Shinkai studied Japanese literature at Chuo University where he was a member of juvenile literature club where he drew picture books. In 1999, Shinkai ...
7. Bill Plympton
Director | Cheatin'
Bill Plympton was born on April 30, 1946 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Cheatin' (2013), I Married a Strange Person! (1997) and Idiots and Angels (2008).
8. Werner Schroeter
Director | Nel regno di Napoli
The key person of the New German Cinema of the '70s. His works, mostly shot in 16mm, combine an intense interest and knowledge of German history and personal dramatic and emotional investigations. Malina (1991) which stars Isabelle Huppert is one of the great classics of modern cinema and deals ...
9. Alan Berliner
Director | Intimate Stranger
Alan Berliner was born on October 11, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is a director and editor, known for Intimate Stranger (1991), First Cousin Once Removed (2012) and Nobody's Business (1996).
10. 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 ...
11. Adolfo Arrieta
Director | Merlín
Adolfo Arrieta was born on August 28, 1942 in Madrid, Spain. He is a director and writer, known for Merlín (1991), Sleeping Beauty (2016) and Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski (1975).
12. 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 ...
13. Jerzy Skolimowski
Actor | The Avengers
Born in Lódz, Poland, in 1938. Director, playwright, scriptwriter, and actor. Graduated in ethnology, literature and history from Warsaw University in 1959. Graduated from Lódz Film Academy in directing in 1962. Feature debut: _Identification Marks - None_ (Rysopis, 1964, scr., dir, act.), awarded ...
14. Terence Fisher
Director | Dracula
Terence Fisher was born in Maida Vale, England, in 1904. Raised by his grandmother in a strict Christian Scientist environment, Fisher left school while still in his teens to join the Merchant Marine. By his own account he soon discovered that a life at sea was not for him, so he left the service ...
15. Whit Stillman
Director | Love & Friendship
Whit Stillman was born in 1952 and raised in Cornwall in upstate New York, the son of a impoverished debutante from Philadelphia and a Democratic politician from Washington D.C. Stillman graduated from Harvard in 1973 and started out as a journalist in Manhattan, New York City.
In 1980 he met and ...
16. 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 ...
17. Miguel Gomes
Director | Aquele Querido Mês de Agosto
Miguel Gomes was born in 1972 in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a director and writer, known for Our Beloved Month of August (2008), Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One (2015) and Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One (2015).
18. 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 ...
19. Volker Schlöndorff
Director | Die Blechtrommel
Has studied economy and political sciences as well as at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique (IDHEC) in Paris, France. Worked as an assistant director with Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais. Founded his own production company Bioskop Film together with Reinhard Hauff ...
20. Len Lye
Director | Crusade in Europe
Len Lye was born on July 5, 1901 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was a director and writer, known for Crusade in Europe (1949), N or NW (1938) and He Loved an Actress (1938). He was married to Annette Zeiss and Jane Florence Winifred Thompson. He died on May 15, 1980 in Warwick, Rhode Island, USA.
21. Bruno Dumont
Writer | P'tit Quinquin
Bruno Dumont was born on March 14, 1958 in Bailleul, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He is a writer and director, known for Li'l Quinquin (2014), The Life of Jesus (1997) and Camille Claudel 1915 (2013).
22. Jean-Marc Vallée
Director | C.R.A.Z.Y.
Jean-Marc Vallée was a Canadian filmmaker, editor and screenwriter from Montreal. He directed Black List, C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria, Wild, Dallas Buyers Club, Los Locos, Loser Love and Café de Flore. He also created the HBO shows Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. He was married to Chantal ...
23. 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 ...
24. 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.
25. Kazuo Kuroki
Director | Chichi to kuraseba
Kazuo Kuroki was born on November 10, 1930 in Matsuzaka, Mie, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for The Face of Jizo (2004), Tomorrow - ashita (1988) and A Boy's Summer in 1945 (2002). He died on April 12, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan.
26. 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...
27. Frans Zwartjes
Director | Pentimento
Born in 1927, Frans Zwartjes did not turn to filmmaking until age 41, in 1968, when he embarked on a series of several dozen black and white experimental shorts over 3 years. Previously he had been a musician, a violin maker and a painter. In his youth he had also been a viola performer with the ...
28. István Szabó
Director | Sunshine
István Szabó was the first director to bring home to Hungary the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie receiving the award was his 1981 film Mephisto. In January 2006, it became public that he had been an agent of the III/III department, a former communist agency of interior intelligence....
29. Teruo Ishii
Director | Gensen-Kan Shujin
Teruo Ishii was born on January 1, 1924 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Gensen-Kan Inn (1993), Female Yakuza Tale (1973) and The Great Villain's Strategy (1966). He died on August 12, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan.
30. Catherine Breillat
Writer | À ma soeur!
Catherine Breillat is a Paris based filmmaker and writer who became famous for her distinctively personal films on sexuality, gender trouble and sibling rivalry. Accused of being a "porno auteuriste", Breillat allowed for an unbiased view of sexuality and extended the language of mainstream movies....
31. Johnnie To
Director | Hak se wooi
With over thirty directing and producing credits to his name, Johnnie To enjoyed international breakthroughs with Election (2005), Election 2 (2006) (aka "Triad Election") and Exiled (2006); those films enjoyed multiple international film festival appearances and were separately sold to more than ...
32. Jon Jost
Director | They Had It Coming
Born in Chicago in 1943, of a military family, Jost grew up in Georgia, Kansas, Japan, Italy, Germany, and, Virginia. Expelled from college in 1963, He began making 16mm films. He is self-taught. He has made some 20 shorts and 16 feature films, all of which he has conceived, written, photographed, ...
33. James Benning
Director | RR
James Benning was born on December 28, 1942 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He is a director and editor, known for RR (2007), 13 Lakes (2004) and Casting a Glance (2007).
34. Peter B. Hutton
Director | Study of a River
Peter B. Hutton was born on August 24, 1944. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Study of a River (1997), No Picnic (1986) and Skagafjördur (2004). He died on June 25, 2016.
35. Alain Robbe-Grillet
Writer | Un bruit qui rend fou
Born in Brest, France, in 1922, Alain Robbe-Grillet initially studied mathematics and biology. He graduated from the Paris-based Institut National Agronomique (National Institute of Agronomy) in 1945 and embarked on a career of scientific research in the tropics and in France. Then at age 30 he ...
36. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Director | Hausu
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi was born on January 9, 1938 in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. He was a director and editor, known for House (1977), Turning Point (1994) and The Discarnates (1988). He was married to Kyôko Ôbayashi. He died on April 10, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.
37. Nelson Lyon
Writer | The Telephone Book
Nelson Lyon was born on February 28, 1939 in Troy Hills, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Telephone Book (1971), The Baron (1977) and Saturday Night Live (1975). He was married to Jill. He died on July 17, 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
38. Donald Cammell
Director | Wild Side
British writer/director Donald Cammell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1934, came from a wealthy shipbuilding family. He began his career as a painter, and by the mid-1960s was celebrated among the "Swinging London" crowd. He made his foray into the film industry when he wrote the script for The ...
39. Leslie Thornton
Director | Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Complete Cycle
Leslie Thornton is known for Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Complete Cycle (2002), Adynata (1983) and X-Tracts (1975).
40. Norman McLaren
Producer | Neighbours
Norman McLaren is one of the most awarded filmmakers in the history of Canadian cinema, and a pioneer in both animation and filmmaking. Born in Scotland, he entered the Glasgow School of Fine Arts in 1932 to study set design. His early experiments in animation included actually scratching and ...
41. Kiyotaka Tsurisaki
Director | Orozco el embalsamador
Kiyotaka Tsurisaki is known for Orozco the Embalmer (2001), Junk Films (2008) and Indo no yukaina nakama-tachi 2 (2021).
42. Norifumi Suzuki
Director | Torakku yarô: Goiken muyô
Norifumi Suzuki was born on November 26, 1933 in Shizuoka, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Truck Rascals (1975), Kantô Tekiya ikka: Goromen himatsuri (1971) and Girl Boss Revenge: Sukeban (1973). He died on May 15, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan.
43. Curtis Harrington
Director | Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
Curtis Harrington was an excellent and shamefully underrated writer and director who specialized in marvelously offbeat and atmospheric low-budget independent horror pictures. Harrington was born on September 17, 1926, in Los Angeles and grew up in Beaumont, California. A hardcore film buff from a ...
44. Douglas Hickox
Director | Blackout
Douglas Hickox was born on January 10, 1929 in London, England, UK. He was an assistant director and director, known for Blackout (1985), Sitting Target (1972) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983). He was married to Josephine Elizabeth Popovic nee May, Anne V. Coates and Annabel Hickox. He died...
45. Juraj Jakubisko
Director | Bathory
Juraj Jakubisko was born on April 30, 1938 in Kojsov, Czechoslovakia [now Slovakia]. He was a director and writer, known for Bathory: Countess of Blood (2008), Kristove roky (1967) and Perinbaba (1985). He was married to Deana Horváthová. He died on February 24, 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic.
46. 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...
47. Doris Wishman
Director | Satan Was a Lady
Doris Wishman was born on June 1, 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a director and producer, known for Satan Was a Lady (2001), Nude on the Moon (1961) and Diary of a Nudist (1961). She was married to Louis Silverman and Jack Abrahms. She died on August 10, 2002 in Miami, Florida, USA.
48. 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 ...
49. Joe D'Amato
Director | Emanuelle e Françoise (Le sorelline)
Joe D'Amato was born Aristide Massaccesi on December 15, 1936, in Rome, Italy. At age 14 he began working for his father, a chief electrician and later the founder of the company A.C.M. By going to school in the daytime, Massaccesi worked afternoons part-time as a stagehand and stage cameraman ...
50. Seijun Suzuki
Director | Tsigoineruwaizen
Seijun Suzuki was born in Nihonbashi, Tôkyô, on May 24, 1923. In 1943, he entered the army to fight at the front. In 1946, he enrolled in the film department of the Kamakura Academy and passed the assistant director's exam. For the next few years, he worked as an assistant director at several ...
51. Gakuryû Ishii
Director | Yume no ginga
Gakuryû Ishii was born on January 15, 1957 in Hakata, Fukuoka, Japan. He is a director and writer, known for Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), Enjeru dasuto (1994) and Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001).
52. Akio Jissôji
Director | Shirubâ Kamen
Akio Jissôji was born on March 29, 1937 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Silver Mask (2006), This Transient Life (1970) and Shirubâ kamen (1971). He was married to Chisako Hara. He died on November 29, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan.
53. Joe D'Amato
Director | Emanuelle e Françoise (Le sorelline)
Joe D'Amato was born Aristide Massaccesi on December 15, 1936, in Rome, Italy. At age 14 he began working for his father, a chief electrician and later the founder of the company A.C.M. By going to school in the daytime, Massaccesi worked afternoons part-time as a stagehand and stage cameraman ...
54. Luigi Cozzi
Director | Hercules
Luigi Cozzi was born on September 7, 1947 in Busto Arsizio, Italy. He is a director and writer, known for Hercules (1983), Starcrash (1978) and Contamination (1980).
55. Lucio Fulci
Writer | Lo squartatore di New York
Lucio Fulci, born in Rome in 1927, remains as controversial in death as he was in life. A gifted craftsman with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of dark humor, Fulci achieved some measure of notoriety for his gore epics of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but respect was long in coming.
Abandoning ...
56. 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 ...
57. Hiroshi Teshigahara
Director | Suna no onna
Hiroshi Teshigahara was born the son of Sofu Teshigahara who was the founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana (flower arrangement). In 1950, he graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in oil painting. In 1958, he became the director of Sogetsu Art Centre and took a ...
58. Hitoshi Matsumoto
Writer | Dai-Nihonjin
Hitoshi Matsumoto and his childhood friend Masatoshi Hamada teamed up as comedy duo Downtown. When they had their own TV shows in late 80s, they became phenomenal pop culture among young Japanese people. Unlike other comedy duos in Japan, they are still together, and they dominate prime time TV ...
59. Alan Berliner
Director | Intimate Stranger
Alan Berliner was born on October 11, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is a director and editor, known for Intimate Stranger (1991), First Cousin Once Removed (2012) and Nobody's Business (1996).
Tell Your Friends