10 Seen Directors

1. Woody Allen

Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.

Allen ...

50 films with average score of 7.6

Favourite film: Annie Hall (10/10) Least favourite film: A Rainy Day in New York (5/10)

2. Werner Herzog

Director | Fitzcarraldo

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...

40 films with average score of 8.4

Favourite film: Heart of Glass (10/10) Least favourite film: The Wild Blue Yonder (7/10)

3. Sion Sono

Director | Ai no mukidashi

Shion Sono is a Japanese director, writer and poet. Born in Aichi Perfecture in 1961 he started his career working as a poet before taking his first steps in film directing. As a student he shot a series of short films in Super 8 and managed to make his first feature films in the late 80s and early...

38 films with average score of 8.1

Favourite film: Hazard (10/10) Least favourite film: Decisive Match! Girls Dorm Against Boys Dorm (5/10)

4. 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, ...

36 films with average score of 7.7

Favourite film: The Happiness of the Katakuris (10/10) Least favourite film: Shinjuku Triad Society (4/10)

5. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...

27 films with average score of 7.7

Favourite film: Unforgiven (10/10) Least favourite film: Bird (5/10)

6. Akira Kurosawa

Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin

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...

26 films with average score of 8.8

Favourite film: Ran (10/10) Least favourite film: The Most Beautiful (5/10)

7. 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 ...

23 films with average score of 8.0

Favourite film: Double Indemnity (10/10) Least favourite film: Irma la Douce (5/10)

8. 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 ...

23 films with average score of 6.0

Favourite film: Branded to Kill (10/10) Least favourite film: Fighting Elegy (3/10)

9. David Cronenberg

Actor | The Fly

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...

20 films with average score of 7.2

Favourite film: Videodrome (10/10) Least favourite film: Crimes of the Future (1970) (2/10)

10. 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 ...

20 films with average score of 6.7

Favourite film: Mad Detective (10/10) Least favourite film: Election 2 (3/10)

11. Joel Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...

19 films with average score of 8.1

Favourite film: The Big Lebowski (10/10) Least favourite film: Intolerable Cruelty (3/10)

12. Martin Scorsese

Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...

19 films with average score of 7.6

Favourite film: Goodfellas (10/10) Least favourite film: Gangs of New York (5/10)

13. 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. ...

19 films with average score of 7.4

Favourite film: M (10/10) Least favourite film: Moonfleet (3/10)

14. 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.

18 films with average score of 8.5

Favourite film: The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (10/10) Least favourite film: Fountainhead (7/10)

15. 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 ...

18 films with average score of 7.6

Favourite film: North by Northwest (9/10) Least favourite film: The Man Who Knew Too Much '34 (4/10)

16. 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 ...

18 films with average score of 6.8

Favourite film: Tokyo Story (9/10) Least favourite film: Woman of Tokyo (2/10)

17. Ethan Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel...

17 films with average score of 8.1

Favourite film: The Big Lebowski (10/10) Least favourite film: Intolerable Cruelty (3/10)

18. Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Actor | Tetsuo

Shin'ya Tsukamoto was born on January 1, 1960 in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. He is an actor and director, known for Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Vital (2004) and Tokyo Fist (1995).

17 films with average score of 7.8

Favourite film: Tokyo Fist (9/10) Least favourite film: Nightmare Detective 2 (6/10)

19. Oliver Stone

Director | JFK

Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success.

William Oliver Stone was ...

16 films with average score of 7.3

Favourite film: South of the Border (9/10) Least favourite film: W. (4/10)

20. Takeshi Kitano

Actor | Zatôichi

Takeshi Kitano originally studied to become an engineer, but was thrown out of school for rebellious behavior. He learned comedy, singing and dancing from famed comedian Senzaburô Fukami. Working as a lift boy on a nightclub with such features as comic sketches and striptease dancing, Kitano saw ...

16 films with average score of 7.3

Favourite film: Kikujiro (10/10) Least favourite film: Kids Return (5/10)

21. Shôhei Imamura

Director | Kuroi ame

Shohei Imamura's films dig beneath the surface of Japanese society to reveal a wellspring of sensual, often irrational, energy that lies beneath. Along with his colleagues Nagisa Ôshima and Masahiro Shinoda, Imamura began his serious directorial career as a member of the New Wave movement in Japan....

15 films with average score of 7.2

Favourite film: Profound Desires of the Gods (10/10) Least favourite film: A Man Vanishes (2/10)

22. Nagisa Ôshima

Director | Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Nagisa Oshima's career extends from the initiation of the "Nuberu bagu" (New Wave) movement in Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to the contemporary use of cinema and television to express paradoxes in modern society. After an early involvement with the student protest movement in ...

15 films with average score of 6.4

Favourite film: Empire of Passion (9/10) Least favourite film: In the Realm of the Senses (3/10)

23. 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 ...

13 films with average score of 7.4

Favourite film: Paris, Texas (10/10) Least favourite film: Hammett (5/10)

24. Steven Spielberg

Producer | Schindler's List

One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...

13 films with average score 7.4

Favourite film: Jurassic Park (9/10) Least favourite film: Munich (5/10)

25. Kore-eda Hirokazu

Director | Manbiki kazoku

Born in Tokyo in 1962. Originally intended to be a novelist, but after graduating from Waseda University in 1987 went on to become an assistant director at T.V. Man Union. Snuck off set to film Mou hitotsu no kyouiku - Ina shogakkou haru gumi no kiroku (1991). His first feature, Maborosi (1995), ...

13 films with average score of 6.2

Favourite film: Nobody Knows (8/10) Least favourite film: Distance (3/10)

26. 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 ...

12 films with average score of 8.6

Favourite film: The Wind Rises (10/10) Least favourite film: Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (8/10)

27. Kenji Misumi

Director | Shogun Assassin

Kenji Misumi was born on March 2, 1921 in Kyoto, Japan. Misumi was the illegitimate child of a geisha mother and originally wanted to be a painter, but his father disapproved. Kenji attended Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. During this time Misumi met future Daiei studio head Kan Kikuchi, ...

12 films with average score of 7.8

Favourite film: Zatoichi Challenged (9/10) Least favourite film: Shinsengumi Chronicles (5/10)

28. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...

12 films with average score of 6.4

Favourite film: Despair (9/10) Least favourite film: Gods of the Plague (3/10)

29. David Lynch

Writer | Twin Peaks

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

11 films with average score of 8.5

Favourite film: Twin Peaks: The Return (10/10) Least favourite film: Dune (5/10)

30. 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 ...

11 films with average score of 7.8

Favourite film: The Shining (10/10) Least favourite film: Barry Lyndon (6/10)

31. Terry Gilliam

Writer | Brazil

Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...

11 films with average score of 7.8

Favourite film: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (10/10) Least favourite film: The Meaning of Life (4/10)

32. Sammo Kam-Bo Hung

Stunts | Ip Man

Born in Hong Kong, Sammo Hung's acting career began while he was training in acrobatics, martial arts and dance as a child at the China Drama Academy, and he received acclaim for his performance with a troupe called "The Seven Little Fortunes." He made his feature film debut as an actor at the age ...

11 films with average score of 7.5

Favourite film: Dragons Forever (9/10) Least favourite film: My Lucky Stars (6/10)

33. John Waters

Writer | Pecker

Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore ...

11 films with average score of 7.5

Favourite film: Polyester (9/10) Least favourite film: Cry-Baby (6/10)

34. Lars von Trier

Writer | Dancer in the Dark

Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly ...

11 films with average score of 7.0

Favourite film: The House that Jack Built (9/10) Least favourite film: Dancer in the Dark (2/10)

35. 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 ...

11 films with average score of 6.8

Favourite film: Memento (9/10) Least favourite film: Dunkirk (2/10)

36. 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 (...

11 films with average score of 6.6

Favourite film: Fanny and Alexander (10/10) Least favourite film: Cries and Whispers (2/10)

37. Cheh Chang

Director | Bao chou

Chang Cheh was the leading Martial Arts director in Hong Kong in the 1970s, now with close to 100 films to his name. His has influenced other directors such as John Woo and Liu Chiau Liang, and made famous such Hong Kong stars as Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok, Fu Sheng and Lung Ti. Chang has declared ...

11 films with average score of 6.3

Favourite film: Crippled Avengers (9/10) Least favourite film: Five Shaolin Masters (3/10)

38. 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...

10 films with average score of 9.0

Favourite film: Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (10/10) Least favourite film: Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (8/10)

39. 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.

10 films with average score of 7.5

Favourite film: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (9/10) Least favourite film: I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (5/10)

40. Paul Schrader

Writer | First Reformed

Although his name is often linked to that of the "movie brat" generation (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Brian De Palma, etc.) Paul Schrader's background couldn't have been more different than theirs. His strict Calvinist parents refused to allow him to see a...

10 films with average score of 7.3

Favourite film: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (9/10) Least favourite film: Cat People (5/10)

41. Hideo Gosha

Director | Goyôkin

Hideo Gosha was born on February 26, 1929 in Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan (undisclosed). He was a director and writer, known for The Steel Edge of Revenge (1969), Yôkirô (1983) and Onimasa (1982). He died on August 30, 1992.

10 films with average score of 7.3

Favourite film: Three Outlaw Samurai (9/10) Least favourite film: Violent Streets (5/10)

42. Jackie Chan

Actor | Ngo si seoi

Hong Kong's cheeky, lovable and best-known film star, Jackie Chan endured many years of long, hard work and multiple injuries to establish international success after his start in Hong Kong's manic martial arts cinema industry.

Jackie was born Kong-sang Chan on April 7, 1954, on Hong Kong's famous ...

10 films with average score of 7.1

Favourite film: Police Story (8/10) Least favourite film: Crime Story (6/10)

43. Brian De Palma

Director | Body Double

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...

10 films with average score of 7.1

Favourite film: Phantom of the Paradise (8/10) Least favourite film: The Untouchables (6/10)

44. John Huston

Director | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English,...

10 films with average score of 6.8

Favourite film: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (9/10) Least favourite film: Fat City (2/10)

45. Kinji Fukasaku

Director | Batoru rowaiaru

Kinji Fukasaku was born on July 3, 1930 in Mito, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Battle Royale (2000), Fall Guy (1982) and Crest of Betrayal (1994). He was married to Sanae Nakahara. He died on January 12, 2003 in Tokyo, Japan.

10 films with average score of 6.4

Favourite film: Virus (9/10) Least favourite film: Cops vs. Thugs (3/10)