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40 Famous Movie Directors of All time

Movie directors are the unsung heroes of cinema. They are the ones who bring stories to life on screen, and they play a vital role in shaping our cultural landscape. They are responsible for everything from the story and characters to the cinematography and editing. Great directors have the ability to transport us to other worlds and tell stories that stay with us long after the credits have rolled.

These visionary filmmakers have left an indelible mark on the silver screen. In this article, we highlight 40 of the most iconic and influential movie directors of all time. These directors have shaped our perceptions, challenged our emotions, and transformed the way we experience the magic of movies. Read more as we delve into their extraordinary legacies and the enduring impact of their artistry on the world of film.

1. Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director, screenwriter, producer and editor. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. 

Known as the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins. His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller genre.

2. Steven Spielberg

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Steven Spielberg is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director in history. He is the recipient of many awards in the film industry. Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series.  Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

In 1993, Spielberg directed back-to-back blockbuster hits with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler’s List, which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter and the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Several of Spielberg’s works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films ever.

3. Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is an American and Italian film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. His directorial debut, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), was accepted into the Chicago Film Festival. In the 1970s and 1980s decades, Scorsese’s films, much influenced by his Italian-American background and upbringing in New York City, centre on macho-posturing men and explore crime, machismo, nihilism, and Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption. His trademark styles include extensive use of slow motion and freeze frames, graphic depictions of extreme violence, and liberal use of profanity. His 1973 crime film Mean Streets was a blueprint for his filmmaking style. Read more about the most famous Mafia Documentaries to watch. 

In addition to the film, Scorsese has directed episodes for some television series including the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2011–2015), and Vinyl (2016), as well as the HBO documentary Public Speaking (2010), and the Netflix docu-series Pretend It’s a City (2021). An advocate for film preservation and restoration, he founded three nonprofit organizations: The Film Foundation in 1990, the World Cinema Foundation in 2007, and the African Film Heritage Project in 2017.

4. Quentin Tarantino

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Quentin Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and author. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue including a pervasive use of profanity, and references to popular culture.

Tarantino began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of the crime film Reservoir Dogs in 1992. His second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a dark comedy crime thriller, was a major success with critics and audiences winning numerous awards.  Tarantino’s third film, Jackie Brown (1997), paid homage to blaxploitation films. During Tarantino’s career, his films have garnered a cult following, as well as critical and commercial success, he has been considered the single most influential director of his generation. 

5. Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, nearly all of which are adaptations of novels or short stories, span a number of genres and are known for their intense attention to detail, innovative cinematography, extensive set design and dark humour.

After working as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s he began making short films on shoestring budgets and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas: the anti-war film Paths of Glory (1957) and the historical epic Spartacus (1960). While many of Kubrick’s films were controversial and initially received mixed reviews upon release, particularly the brutal A Clockwork Orange (1971). His last film, the erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut, was completed shortly before his death in 1999 at the age of 70.

6. Akira Kurosawa

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Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production.

Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director’s reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. 

7. Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  Coppola’s reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather (1972), which revolutionized the gangster genre of filmmaking, receiving strong commercial and critical reception. The Godfather won three Academy Awards. the film earned Coppola two more Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, making him the second director, after Billy Wilder to win these three awards for the same film.

His next film, the war epic Apocalypse Now (1979), which had a notoriously lengthy and strenuous production, was widely acclaimed for vividly depicting the Vietnam War. Other notable films Coppola has released since the start of the 1980s include the dramas The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both 1983), The Cotton Club (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), The Godfather Part III (1990), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and The Rainmaker (1997).

8. Woody Allen

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Woody Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen began his career writing material for television in the 1950s. After writing, directing, and starring in a string of slapstick comedies, such as Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975), he directed his most successful film, Annie Hall (1977), a romantic comedy featuring Allen and his frequent collaborator Diane Keaton. The film won four Academy Awards.

Allen continued to garner acclaim, making a film almost every year, and is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of auteur filmmakers whose work has been influenced by European art cinema. His films include Interiors (1978), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), Husbands and Wives (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Blue Jasmine (2013).

9. Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish filmmaker and theatre director. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential screenwriters and film directors of all time, his films have been described as profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul. Most of his films were set in Sweden.

Some of his most acclaimed works include The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), and Fanny and Alexander (1982); these four films were included in the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time. Bergman was also ranked No. 8 on the magazine’s 2002 Greatest Directors of All Time list. Bergman directed more than 60 films and documentaries, most of which he also wrote, for both cinema releases and television screenings. 

10. Billy Wilder

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Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir Double Indemnity (1944), based on the novel by James M Cain with a screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Wilder won the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for The Lost Weekend (1945), which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a string of critically acclaimed films, including the Hollywood drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he won his second screenplay Academy Award; Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953) and Sabrina (1954). Wilder directed and co-wrote three films in 1957: The Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon and Witness for the Prosecution. During this period, Wilder also directed Marilyn Monroe in two films, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959). Other notable films Wilder directed include One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), The Fortune Cookie (1966) and Avanti! (1972).

11. Orson Welles

Orson Welles was an American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots and long takes. 

His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. It has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. He directed twelve other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1966) and F for Fake (1973). Welles also starred in films such as Jane Eyre (1943), The Third Man (1949), and A Man for All Seasons (1966).

12. Federico Fellini

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Federico Fellini was an Italian filmmaker. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Fellini was nominated for 16 Academy Awards over the course of his career, winning a total of four in the category of Best Foreign Language Film, the most for any director in the history of the award.

Fellini’s best-known films include I vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8? (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Fellini Satyricon (1969), Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), and Fellini’s Casanova (1976). 

13. David Fincher

David Fincher is an American filmmaker. His films, most of which are psychological thrillers, have collectively grossed over $2.1 billion worldwide and have received 40 Academy Award nominations. Fincher became interested in filmmaking at the age of eight. In 1986, at the age of 24, he co-founded the production company Propaganda Films.

He made his feature film directorial debut with Alien 3 (1992) and gained acclaim with Seven (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002), and Zodiac (2007). Fincher received Best Director nominations at the Academy Awards for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), and Mank (2020). He also directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Gone Girl (2014). In the field of television, Fincher’s work includes serving as an executive producer and director for the Netflix series House of Cards (2013–2018) and Mindhunter (2017–2019), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the pilot episode of House of Cards.  Here is a list of more of the greatest drama movies ever made. 

14. Christopher Nolan

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Christopher Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. His films have grossed $5 billion worldwide.  After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. 

He transitioned from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010); the last of these earned Nolan two Oscar nominations Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023). For Dunkirk, he earned two Academy Award nominations, including his first for Best Director.

15. Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar is a Spanish film director and screenwriter. His films are marked by melodrama, irreverent humour, bold colour, glossy décor, quotations from popular culture, and complex narratives. Desire, LGBT issues, passion, family, and identity are among Almodóvar’s most prevalent subjects in his films. Acclaimed as one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers, Almodóvar and his films have gained worldwide interest and developed a cult following.

In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo. His breakthrough film was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He directed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), High Heels (1991), and Live Flesh (1997). Almodóvar’s next two films, All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002), earned him an Academy Award each for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay, respectively. He is also known for directing several short films including The Human Voice (2020), and Strange Way of Life (2023)

16. Ridley Scott

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Ridley Scott is a British filmmaker. He is best known for directing films in the science fiction, crime, and historical drama genres. His work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. He made his debut as a film director with The Duellists (1977) and gained wider recognition with his next film, Alien (1979). In 1982 he directed Blade Runner, which Scott calls his most complete and personal film. 

Several of his films are also known for their strong female characters, such as Alien, Thelma & Louise (1991), G.I. Jane (1997) and The Martian. Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, which he received for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and he received a nomination in the same category for The Martian. In 1995, both Scott and his brother Tony received a British Academy Film Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.

17. Tim Burton

Tim Burton is an American filmmaker, animator, and artist. Known for pioneering goth culture in the American film industry, Burton is revered for his fantasy, horror, and romantic films. These include Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and Dark Shadows (2012), as well as the television series Wednesday (2022). 

Burton also directed the superhero films Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), the sci-fi film Planet of the Apes (2001), the fantasy-drama Big Fish (2003), the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and the fantasy films Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016).

18. George Lucas

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George Lucas is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Lucas is one of history’s most financially successful filmmakers. Lucas personally directed or conceived 10 of the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Lucas is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. 

Lucas released the film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), which had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and co-wrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). With director Steven Spielberg, he created, produced, and co-wrote the Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and served as an executive producer in name only on The Dial of Destiny (2023).

19. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 

His greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang ‘Em High (1968), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985), the action-war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the war film Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action film In the Line of Fire (1993), and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995). More recent works include Gran Torino (2008), The Mule (2018), and Cry Macho (2021). 

20. Spike Lee

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Spike Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut with She’s Gotta Have It (1986). He has since written and directed such films as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Chi-Raq (2015), BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). 

Lee’s films Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls and She’s Gotta Have It were each selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. His films have featured breakthrough and acclaimed performances from actors such as Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Delroy Lindo and John David Washington.

21. Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their eccentricity, unique visual and narrative styles, and frequent use of ensemble casts. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. He gained acclaim for his early films Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998).  His next films included The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), and his first stop-motion film, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

For his film The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), he received his first Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. Later works include his second stop-motion film, Isle of Dogs (2018), earning him the Silver Bear for Best Director, followed by The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023).  Read about these and more Controversial French Films. 

22. James Cameron

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James Cameron  is a Canadian filmmaker. A major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, Cameron is considered one of the industry’s most innovative filmmakers, regularly making use of novel technologies. Cameron’s films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him the second-highest-grossing film director of all time.

Cameron first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and the action comedy True Lies (1994). He wrote and directed Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and its sequels, with Titanic earning him Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing.

23. David Lynch

David Lynch is an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician and actor. Lynch has received critical acclaim for his films, which are often distinguished by their surrealist qualities.  His first feature-length film was Eraserhead (1977). 

He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). His film Wild at Heart (1990) earned the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. Other notable films include Dune (1984), Lost Highway (1997), and Inland Empire (2006).

24. Oliver Stone

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Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone is known as a controversial but acclaimed director, tackling subjects ranging from the Vietnam War, and American politics to musical biopics and crime dramas. Many of Stone’s films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases.

Stone started his film career writing the screenplays for Midnight Express (1978), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Conan the Barbarian (1982), and Scarface (1983). He then rose to prominence as writer and director of the Vietnam War film dramas Platoon (1986), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) for which he received Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for the former and Best Director for the latter. He also directed Salvador (1986), Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Heaven & Earth (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Nixon (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), W. (2008), and Snowden (2016).

25. Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski is a French and Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Polanski’s first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), was made in Poland and was nominated for the United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. After living in France for a few years, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he directed his first three English-language feature-length films: Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). In 1968, he moved to the United States and cemented his status in the film industry by directing the horror film Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

He made Macbeth (1971) in England and Chinatown (1974) back in Hollywood. His other critically acclaimed films include Tess (1979), The Pianist (2002) which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, The Ghost Writer (2010), Venus in Fur (2013), and An Officer and a Spy (2019). Polanski has made 23 feature films to date.

26. Robert Altman

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Robert Altman was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Altman’s style of filmmaking covered many genres, but usually with a subversive or anti-Hollywood twist which typically relied on satire and humor to express his personal views. 

His most famous directorial achievements include M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Nashville (1975), 3 Women (1977), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), and Gosford Park (2001).

27. Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick is an American filmmaker. Malick’s films have explored themes such as transcendence, nature, and conflicts between reason and instinct. They are typically marked by broad philosophical and spiritual overtones, as well as the use of meditative voice-overs from individual characters.

His films include Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, The New World (2005) and The Tree of Life (2011), the latter of which garnered him another Best Director Oscar nomination and the Palme d’Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

28. Michael Bay

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Michael Bay is an American film director and producer. He is best known for making big-budget, high-concept action films characterized by fast cutting, stylistic cinematography and visuals, and extensive use of special effects, including frequent depictions of explosions. The films he has produced and directed, which include Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001) and the Transformers film series (2007–present), have grossed over US$7.8 billion worldwide, making him one of the most commercially successful directors in history.

29. Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. 

His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10 1?2: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).

30. Greta Gerwig

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Greta Gerwig is an American actress, writer, and director. Gerwig has written and directed the coming-of-age films Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), both of which earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

For the former, she received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and for the latter, she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Her next directorial, the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023), which she co-wrote with Baumbach, became the first film from a solo female director to gross over $1 billion worldwide.

31. Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system. Soderbergh’s directorial breakthrough, the indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), lifted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry. 

At 26, Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next five films, which included King of the Hill (1993), were commercially unsuccessful. He pivoted into more mainstream fare with the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000). For Traffic, he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

32. Tim Robbins

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Tim Robbins  is an American actor, director and producer. He is best known for portraying Andy Dufresne in the film The Shawshank Redemption (1994). also directed the films Bob Roberts (1992) and Dead Man Walking (1995), both of which were well received. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for Dead Man Walking.

33. Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola is an American filmmaker and actress. Her films often deal with themes of loneliness, wealth, privilege, isolation, youth, femininity, and adolescence in America. She directed the historical drama Marie Antoinette (2006), the family drama Somewhere (2010), the satirical crime drama The Bling Ring (2013), the southern gothic thriller The Beguiled (2017), the comedy On the Rocks (2020), and the biographical drama Priscilla (2023).

In 2015, Coppola released the Netflix Christmas musical comedy special A Very Murray Christmas, which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.  Read more about the famous Marie Antoinette movie. 

34. Milos Forman

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Milos Forman was a Czech-American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968. Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave. Film scholars and Czechoslovak authorities saw his 1967 film The Firemen’s Ball as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism.

He received two Academy Awards for Best Director for the psychological drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and the biographical drama Amadeus (1984). During this time, he also directed notable and acclaimed films such as Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), Hair (1978), Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999).

35. John Ford

John Ford was an American film director. He was one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. In a career of more than 50 years, Ford directed more than 140 films, although most of his silent films are now lost. Ford’s work was held in high regard by his contemporaries, with Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman naming him one of the greatest directors of all time.

He received six Academy Awards including a record four wins for Best Director for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952). He is renowned for Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

36. Stanley Donen

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Stanley Donen was an American film director and choreographer. Donen directed some of the most iconic films of the Golden Age of Cinema.  From 1943, he worked in Hollywood as a choreographer before collaborating with Gene Kelly where Donen worked as a contract director for MGM under producer Arthur Freed. Donen and Kelly directed the films On the Town (1949), Singin’ in the Rain, and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955). Donen’s relationship with Kelly deteriorated during their final collaboration. His other films during this period include Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Funny Face (1957).

Donen received acclaim for his later films including the romance films Indiscreet (1958), Charade (1963), and Two for the Road (1967). He also directed the spy thriller Arabesque (1966), the British comedy Bedazzled (1967), the musicals Damn Yankees (1958), and The Little Prince (1974), and the comedy Lucky Lady (1975).

37. James Whale

James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor, who spent the greater part of his career in Hollywood. He is best remembered for several horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), all considered classics. Whale also directed films in other genres, including the 1936 film version of the musical Show Boat.

At the height of his career as a director, Whale directed The Road Back (1937), a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. Studio interference, possibly spurred by political pressure from Nazi Germany, led to the film’s being altered from Whale’s vision, and it was a critical failure. A run of box-office disappointments followed and, while he would make one final short film in 1950, by 1941 his film directing career was effectively over.

38. Hayao Miyazaki

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Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation. Miyazaki’s works are characterized by the recurrence of themes such as humanity’s relationship with nature and technology.

Notable films to which Miyazaki contributed at Toei include Doggie March and Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon. He provided key animation to other films at Toei, such as Puss in Boots and Animal Treasure Island, before moving to A-Pro in 1971, where he co-directed Lupin the Third Part I alongside Takahata. Miyazaki worked as an animator on World Masterpiece Theater, and directed the television series Future Boy Conan (1978). He joined Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979 to direct his first feature film The Castle of Cagliostro as well as the television series Sherlock Hound. In the same period, he also began writing and illustrating the manga Nausica? of the Valley of the Wind (1982–1994), and he also directed the 1984 film adaptation produced by Topcraft.

39. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French film director, producer, and screenwriter. His films combine fantasy, realism, and science fiction to create idealized realities or to give relevance to mundane situations. Jeunet is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important directors in modern French cinema.

Jeunet debuted as a director with the acclaimed 1991 black comedy Delicatessen, collaborating with Marc Caro. Jeunet then co-wrote and -directed with Caro again on The City of Lost Children (1995). His work with science fiction and horror led him to direct Alien Resurrection (1997), the fourth film in the Alien film series and his first and thus far only experience with an American film. In 2001, Jeunet achieved his biggest success with the release of Amélie, which won him international acclaim. 

40. Ang Lee

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Ang Lee is a Taiwanese filmmaker. As a filmmaker Lee’s work is known for its emotional charge and exploration of repressed, hidden emotions. Lee rose to promince directing films in his native country such as Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). 

His breakthrough in Hollywood was the acclaimed costume drama Sense and Sensibility (1995), which was also his first entirely English-language film. He went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Director twice for the romantic drama Brokeback Mountain (2005); and the survival drama Life of Pi (2012). He went on to direct films in a broad range of genres, including the drama The Ice Storm (1997); the martial arts drama Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); the superhero blockbuster Hulk (2003) and the erotic espionage drama Lust, Caution (2007).

While these Movie directors highlighted in the article above, come from all over the world and have made films in a variety of genres, they all share one thing in common: they have all made a significant contribution to the art of cinema. These directors have made some of the most iconic and influential films in history, and their work continues to inspire and entertain audiences around the world. Here is another extensive list of famous movie directors.