Directing

The people shaping a film from script to screen.

People in Directing

150 profiles

Actor

Angelina Jolie

Playing Lara Croft and Maleficent.

Actor

Charlie Chaplin

Creating the bowler-hatted Tramp.

Filmmaker

Akira Kurosawa

Directing Seven Samurai and Rashomon.

Filmmaker

Hayao Miyazaki

Directing Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

Filmmaker

David Lynch

Creating Twin Peaks and directing Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.

Actor

Rashida Jones

Playing Ann Perkins in Parks and Recreation and co-directing Quincy.

Actor

Jerry Lewis

Starring in The Nutty Professor and performing with Dean Martin.

Filmmaker

Spike Lee

Directing Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.

Filmmaker

Satyajit Ray

Directing the Apu Trilogy and bringing Bengali everyday life to world cinema.

Filmmaker

Orson Welles

Directing and starring in Citizen Kane.

Filmmaker

Mel Brooks

Creating screen comedies including The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

Filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock

Directing Psycho, Vertigo and carefully controlled suspense.

Filmmaker

Gene Kelly

Turning athletic dance into cinematic storytelling.

Filmmaker

Buster Keaton

Turning dangerous stunts, precise visual jokes and an unchanging expression into silent-film classics.

Filmmaker

Martin Scorsese

Directing Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, films about ambition, violence and guilt.

Animator

Walt Disney

Building the Disney studio, developing Mickey Mouse and creating Disneyland.

Actor

Jonah Hill

Starring in Superbad and earning Oscar nominations for Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Actor

Denzel Washington

Starring in Malcolm X, Training Day and Glory, with major roles on both screen and stage.

Comedian

Ricky Gervais

Co-creating The Office and playing David Brent, the boss desperate to be liked.

Filmmaker

Bong Joon-ho

Directing Parasite, the first non-English-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Filmmaker

Ang Lee

Directing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi.

Filmmaker

Chloé Zhao

Directing Nomadland and becoming the first woman of colour to win the directing Oscar.

Filmmaker

Asghar Farhadi

Directing A Separation and The Salesman, both Academy Award-winning films.

Filmmaker

Steven Spielberg

Directing Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park.

Filmmaker

Christopher Nolan

Directing The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Oppenheimer.

Filmmaker

Guillermo del Toro

Creating dark fairy tales including Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.

Filmmaker

Alfonso Cuarón

Directing Gravity, Children of Men and Roma.

Filmmaker

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Directing Birdman and The Revenant and winning consecutive directing Oscars.

Filmmaker

Jane Campion

Directing The Piano and The Power of the Dog.

Filmmaker

Peter Jackson

Bringing The Lord of the Rings to the screen as a three-film epic.

Filmmaker

Clint Eastwood

Moving from iconic Western roles to directing Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.

Filmmaker

James Cameron

Directing Titanic and Avatar while advancing large-scale visual filmmaking.

Filmmaker

Steven Soderbergh

Directing Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven across independent and mainstream cinema.

Filmmaker

Barry Jenkins

Directing Moonlight, an intimate coming-of-age film that won Best Picture.

Filmmaker

Kathryn Bigelow

Becoming the first woman to win the directing Oscar, for The Hurt Locker.

Filmmaker

Jordan Peele

Using horror to explore race and social anxiety in Get Out, Us and Nope.

Filmmaker

Ousmane Sembène

Helping establish African cinema as a medium for social criticism.

Filmmaker

Taika Waititi

Combining offbeat comedy with emotionally direct films such as Jojo Rabbit.

Filmmaker

Abbas Kiarostami

Creating influential films that blur documentary and fiction.

Filmmaker

Pedro Almodóvar

Vivid Spanish dramas about desire, identity and family, including All About My Mother and Talk to Her.

Filmmaker

Jacques Audiard

Intense dramas about outsiders, including A Prophet, Rust and Bone and Dheepan.

Filmmaker

Federico Fellini

Dreamlike Italian films including La Dolce Vita, 8½ and Amarcord.

Filmmaker

Ingmar Bergman

Films that probe faith, identity and intimate relationships, including The Seventh Seal and Persona.

Filmmaker

Andrei Tarkovsky

Meditative films such as Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker.

Filmmaker

Wong Kar-wai

Atmospheric Hong Kong films about missed connections, including Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love.

Filmmaker

Park Chan-wook

Stylised thrillers including Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave.

Filmmaker

Hirokazu Kore-eda

Quietly powerful family dramas, including Nobody Knows, Still Walking and Shoplifters.

Filmmaker

Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Drive My Car, a patient drama of performance, grief and communication.

Filmmaker

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Dreamlike Thai cinema, including the Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Filmmaker

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Slow-burning Turkish dramas including Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep.

Filmmaker

Nadine Labaki

Capernaum and other films that place everyday Lebanese lives at the centre of social conflict.

Filmmaker

Mira Nair

Films about migration and belonging, including Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake.

Filmmaker

Sidney Lumet

Directing 12 Angry Men, Serpico and Network: tense dramas about justice, power and compromised institutions.

Filmmaker

David Lean

Directing Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai and other expansive historical epics.

Filmmaker

Frank Capra

Directing It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, stories of ordinary people confronting powerful systems.

Filmmaker

Billy Wilder

Directing and co-writing Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, mixing sharp comedy with moral discomfort.

Filmmaker

John Ford

Directing The Searchers, Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath, and winning four Oscars for directing.

Filmmaker

William Wyler

Directing Ben-Hur, Roman Holiday and The Best Years of Our Lives, with three directing Oscars across his career.

Filmmaker

Stanley Kubrick

Directing 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Dr. Strangelove, with meticulous images and unsettling views of human behaviour.

Filmmaker

Sergio Leone

Reinventing the screen Western through the Dollars trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Filmmaker

Michelangelo Antonioni

Directing L'Avventura and Blowup, films that made uncertainty and modern alienation central to cinema.

Filmmaker

Vittorio De Sica

Directing Bicycle Thieves, a defining film of Italian neorealism about poverty, work and a father and son.

Filmmaker

Agnès Varda

Pioneering a personal, playful cinema through Cléo from 5 to 7, Vagabond and The Gleaners and I.

Filmmaker

Chantal Akerman

Directing Jeanne Dielman, the film that topped Sight and Sound’s 2022 critics’ poll.

Filmmaker

Claire Denis

Directing Beau Travail, an acclaimed study of military discipline, jealousy and desire.

Filmmaker

Lina Wertmüller

Becoming the first woman nominated for the directing Oscar, for Seven Beauties.

Filmmaker

Samira Makhmalbaf

Directing The Apple and winning Cannes Jury Prizes for Blackboards and At Five in the Afternoon.

Filmmaker

Deepa Mehta

Directing the Elements trilogy: Fire, Earth and Water, about desire, Partition and the treatment of widows.

Filmmaker

Aparna Sen

Directing 36 Chowringhee Lane and Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, alongside a major Bengali acting career.

Filmmaker

Shōhei Imamura

Winning two Cannes Palmes d’Or with The Ballad of Narayama and The Eel.

Filmmaker

Kenji Mizoguchi

Directing Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff, celebrated for flowing camera movement and stories of suffering and compassion.

Filmmaker

Ritwik Ghatak

Turning the displacement of Bengal’s Partition into powerful cinema, especially The Cloud-Capped Star.

Filmmaker

Mrinal Sen

Helping shape Indian parallel cinema through Bhuvan Shome, Calcutta 71 and socially critical Bengali films.

Filmmaker

Youssef Chahine

Directing Cairo Station and Alexandria… Why?, bringing personal and political questions into Egyptian cinema.

Filmmaker

Souleymane Cissé

Directing Yeelen, the Bambara-language film that won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987.

Filmmaker

Abderrahmane Sissako

Directing Timbuktu and Bamako, films examining power through the lives of ordinary people.

Filmmaker

David Fincher

Directing Seven, Fight Club and The Social Network, with exacting visual control and an interest in obsession and power.

Filmmaker

Francis Ford Coppola

Directing The Godfather films, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now.

Filmmaker

Ridley Scott

Directing Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise and Gladiator.

Filmmaker

Mani Ratnam

Directing Nayakan, Roja and Bombay, combining intimate relationships with wider social conflicts.

Filmmaker

Jia Zhangke

Still Life, Platform and films about people living through China’s rapid transformation.

Filmmaker

Yasujirō Ozu

Tokyo Story and quietly powerful films about family, marriage and generational change.

Filmmaker

Mati Diop

Atlantics and Dahomey, films connecting migration, memory and cultural restitution.

Filmmaker

Haifaa al-Mansour

Directing Wadjda, a Saudi girl’s pursuit of a bicycle and greater freedom.

Filmmaker

Greta Gerwig

Writing and directing Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie.

Filmmaker

Fred Zinnemann

Directing High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.

Filmmaker

S. S. Rajamouli

Directing the Baahubali films and RRR, large-scale Telugu action epics.

Filmmaker

Zhang Yimou

Directing Raise the Red Lantern, To Live and Hero with striking colour and visual composition.

Filmmaker

Mikio Naruse

Directing Floating Clouds and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, dramas of women’s lives and economic pressure.

Filmmaker

Safi Faye

A pioneering Senegalese filmmaker who brought village life and women’s experiences to African cinema.

Filmmaker

Kaouther Ben Hania

The Tunisian director of Four Daughters and The Man Who Sold His Skin, blending documentary and staged storytelling.

Filmmaker

Sofia Coppola

The director of Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides, known for portraits of isolation inside privileged worlds.

Filmmaker

Michael Powell

The British director who created The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death with Emeric Pressburger.

Filmmaker

S. Shankar

The Tamil director behind Indian and Enthiran, combining social themes with large-scale visual spectacle.

Filmmaker

Chen Kaige

The director of Farewell My Concubine, the first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or.

Filmmaker

Nagisa Ōshima

Directing provocative films including In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Filmmaker

Ava DuVernay

Directing Selma, 13th and When They See Us.

Filmmaker

Anurag Kashyap

Directing Gangs of Wasseypur and helping reshape independent Hindi crime cinema.

Filmmaker

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Directing A City of Sadness and helping define Taiwan’s New Cinema.

Filmmaker

Spike Jonze

Directing Being John Malkovich and Her, turning unusual premises into intimate films.

Filmmaker

Ken Loach

Directing Kes and socially engaged dramas including I, Daniel Blake.

Filmmaker

Rajkumar Hirani

The director of 3 Idiots and the Munna Bhai films, known for mixing comedy with criticism of social institutions.

Filmmaker

Paul Thomas Anderson

The director of Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and The Master.

Filmmaker

Mike Leigh

The director of Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, known for developing characters through extensive rehearsal.

Filmmaker

Wes Anderson

The director of The Grand Budapest Hotel, known for meticulous compositions and eccentric fictional worlds.

Filmmaker

Lynne Ramsay

The Scottish director of Ratcatcher and We Need to Talk About Kevin, known for intensely visual storytelling.

Filmmaker

Luis Buñuel

Turning surrealism into a provocative language for cinema.

Filmmaker

Emeric Pressburger

Creating The Red Shoes and other landmark British films with Michael Powell.

Filmmaker

Carlos F. Borcosque

Making films across Chile, Hollywood and Argentine cinema.

Filmmaker

Arie Esiri

Co-directing Eyimofe, a portrait of contemporary Lagos.

Filmmaker

Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Pioneering Malayalam cinema’s new wave with Swayamvaram.

Filmmaker

Daihachi Yoshida

Directing The Kirishima Thing and Pale Moon.

Filmmaker

Buddhadeb Dasgupta

Bringing a poet’s imagination to Bengali cinema.

Filmmaker

Amir Azizi

Directing Temporary and Inside Amir.

Filmmaker

Lee Chang-dong

Directing morally searching films including Poetry and Burning.

Filmmaker

Wang Xiaoshuai

Portraying changing Chinese lives in films including Beijing Bicycle.

Filmmaker

Sebastián Lelio

Directing the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman.

Filmmaker

Fernando Siro

Directing Nadie oyó gritar a Cecilio Fuentes.

Filmmaker

Mani Kaul

Developing an experimental language for Indian parallel cinema.

Filmmaker

Na Hong-jin

Directing The Chaser, The Yellow Sea and The Wailing.

Filmmaker

G. Aravindan

Developing an experimental voice in Malayalam parallel cinema.

Filmmaker

Lu Chuan

Directing Kekexili: Mountain Patrol and City of Life and Death.

Filmmaker

B. V. Karanth

Shaping Kannada theatre and parallel cinema.

Filmmaker

Abrar Alvi

Writing Pyaasa and directing Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam.

Filmmaker

Mostafa Heravi

Making films and music videos across Iranian and Dutch cultural contexts.

Filmmaker

Luis César Amadori

Directing films of Argentina’s classical cinema, including Dios se lo pague.

Filmmaker

Masoud Jafari Jozani

Directing The Stone Lion and In the Wind’s Eye.

Filmmaker

Saeed Akhtar Mirza

Directing Naseem, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro and Nukkad.

Filmmaker

Ann Hui

Directing Boat People, Summer Snow and A Simple Life.

Filmmaker

Chuko Esiri

Co-directing Eyimofe with Arie Esiri.

Filmmaker

Ali Abbasi

Directing Border, Holy Spider and The Apprentice.

Filmmaker

Leonardo Favio

Argentine films including Chronicle of a Boy Alone and Juan Moreira

Filmmaker

Rajesh Mapuskar

Directing Ferrari Ki Sawaari and Ventilator

Filmmaker

Rishab Shetty

Writing, directing and starring in Kantara

Filmmaker

Agathiyan

Directing and writing Kadhal Kottai

Filmmaker

Srijit Mukherji

Bengali films including Autograph and Chotushkone.

Filmmaker

Arash T. Riahi

Films about exile, freedom and the search for self-determination.

Filmmaker

Madhur Bhandarkar

Hindi social dramas including Chandni Bar, Page 3 and Fashion.

Animator

Hossein Molayemi

Co-directing In the Shadow of the Cypress.

Filmmaker

Bahman Farmanara

Iranian films examining memory, mortality and society.

Filmmaker

Shyam Benegal

Helping establish Indian parallel cinema through films including Ankur and Manthan.

Filmmaker

Reza Khatibi

Directing films between Iran and France.

Filmmaker

Mario Gallo

Pioneering staged historical films in early Argentine cinema.

Filmmaker

Adrián Caetano

Helping launch New Argentine Cinema with Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes.

Filmmaker

Kamran Qadakchian

Directing Iranian films including The Song of Tehran.

Filmmaker

Damián Szifron

Creating Los simuladores and directing Wild Tales.

Filmmaker

Behtash Sanaeeha

Co-directing Ballad of a White Cow and My Favourite Cake

Filmmaker

Gurvinder Singh

Punjabi films Anhe Ghore Da Daan and Chauthi Koot

Filmmaker

B. Lenin

Editing Tamil cinema and directing Ooruku Nooruper

Filmmaker

Fred Amata

Acting and directing in Nigerian cinema