Top 30 Greatest Film Directors of Color
From left to Right: Akira Kurosawa, Ava duvernay, mira nair, Spike Lee and Emilio Fernández - Arturo Holmes/Jamie McCarthy/Matt Winkelmeyer/luis lemus
Making a list of the “greatest directors of all time” presents some obvious initial problems. Thinking of thirty names isn’t the hardest part – it’s which thirty you keep, and which ones you must eliminate. The goal here was to make the list equitably and productively. Nationality is a large parameter. One could easily fill up the list with only American, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Senegalese, or Iranian directors, and all those lists would be accurate to these incredible people’s standing in the film world. However, the goal was to compromise, including a wide variety of nationalities and races, but of course, it is imperfect. Everyone has their ideas about who they believe are the best directors and should be on the list. Hopefully, this list will at least inspire readers to throw on a film by a director they haven’t yet explored.
A couple of themes were present when developing this list. Many of the directors are from the same movement of cinema, like Parallel Cinema, the Iranian New Wave, or the American 90s Independent Movement. A common ground can be found between these movements, perhaps because they all involve a break from the conventions of their time. Most filmmakers on the list got their start making independent films on shoestring budgets, and their films are direct results and representations of the process.
One pattern that can be found is that documentary and guerilla filmmaking, are inextricably tied to political and subversive content and style. A lot of these movements intersected with the Italian neorealism movement, but even those that didn’t found a form of neorealism in their avant-garde and mainstream pursuits. Many of the films mentioned here are banned or are extremely difficult to find, and not by accident. Part of the power of these filmmakers was their willingness to defy institutional pressures as well as filmmaking traditions. It is this boldness and revolutionary spirit that has allowed people of color to build and thrive in this art form and its industry.
Eric Charbonneau
30. M. Night Shyamalan
Born 1970 | Genre: Horror, Science Fiction | The Sixth Sense (1999)
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan is an American director, producer, and screenwriter born in Mahé, India. He is a graduate of NYU Tisch, where he adopted “Night” as his second name. Despite his Hindu upbringing and exclusion at Catholic school, he is an American through and through, with strong Hitchcockian influences throughout his filmography.
Shyamalan gained first notoriety through his 1999 film The Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis, which became the second-highest-grossing horror movie of all time and earned six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. It features one of the most iconic twists of recent film history and can be credited with the foundation of spoiler culture. He followed it up with another critical and financial Bruce Willis hit, Unbreakable (2000), and then yet another in Signs (2002). His next couple of films were either critically mixed or financial failures, building up to the infamous The Last Airbender (2010). He was redeemed in the mid-2010s by a couple of hit low-budget horror films (The Visit and Split), and now regularly makes moderately successful studio horror and thriller films.
Mike Marsland
29. Jordan Peele
Born 1979 | Genre: Horror, Science Fiction | Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele is a name familiar to anyone even remotely aware of the modern film scene. Not only is he an Academy Award-winning screenwriter of 2017’s Get Out, but he’s arguably even better known for his sketch comedy show with Keegan-Michael Key, Key and Peele (2012-2015), which won two Primetime Emmys and a Peabody Award. Peele founded his own production company Monkeypaw Productions in 2012, known for producing horror films with Universal Pictures including all of Peele’s films and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man just this April.
Peele made his directorial debut with Get Out, which quickly met with wide critical and financial acclaim (four Oscar nominations, one win, and 225 million dollars worth). Its subversive themes and prescience for the Trump-era political atmosphere immediately solidified him, much like Shyamalan, as one of the most promising visionary filmmakers of our time. He quickly followed it up with Us in 2019 and then Nope in 2022, both highly successful and beloved films in their own right. Peele’s films feature top-tier horror filmmaking inspired by the likes of Hitchcock and Shyamalan with a healthy dose of his well-honed sense of humor, resulting in a unique and modern tone that always seems to be commenting both on cinema history and the current moment.
Michael Tran
28. Cheryl Dunye
Born 1966 | Genre: Documentary, Experimental, Drama | The Watermelon Woman (1996)
This Liberian American filmmaker is known for her experimental documentary and narrative work that blurs fact and fiction to explore her personal experiences. In 1996 she became the first black lesbian to direct a theatrically released feature film with her debut The Watermelon Woman, now restored for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She also directed the HBO television movie Stranger Inside, about the experiences of African American lesbians in prison, the script for which she worked with 12 incarcerated women from the Shakopee Correctional Facility in Minnesota in a workshop.
Dunye uses experimentation with documentary-style cinematography to emphasize authenticity in intersectional politics. She has a unique self-reflexive humor that both makes light of and helps her to work through her struggles. Her shorts explore territory mostly untouched by mainstream cinema, especially the nuances of race and sex in lesbian communities. Recently, she has directed several acclaimed episodes of shows like Queen Sugar and Lovecraft Country and continues to make great work to add to her filmography.
The Hindu Archives
27. Hrishikesh Mukherjee
1922 – 2006 | Genre: Comedy, Drama | Chupke Chupke (1975)
Hrishikesh Mukherjee is recognized as a monumental figure of Indian cinema, hailing from a legendary tradition of Bengali filmmakers. He was a mentee of renowned Parallel Cinema filmmaker Bimal Roy, gleaning from him the neorealistic sensibilities that he brought to the mainstream. He was affectionately referred to as “Hrishi-da” in the industry.
Mukherjee was known for introducing “middle cinema” in India, combining influences from art cinema with populism from the mainstream to reflect the changing middle class. He directed his debut Musafir (1957) to mixed results but moved on to Anari in 1959 with the legendary Raj Kapoor, winning 5 Filmfare Awards. During a time of formulaic escapist blockbusters, Mukherjee was able to create understated drama that played with tradition and modernism and an authentic love for ordinariness. He gave other great actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, and Jaya Bhaduri their breakthroughs with Anand (1970) and Guddi (1971), cementing him in the cinematic hall of fame. Like his films, he was often known to be easygoing and pleasant to be around, while never compromising on vision. While his style wasn’t flashy or vivid, his ability to captivate audiences with their own lives makes him an icon still worthy of celebration.
Elisabetta Villa / Stringer
26. Satoshi Kon
1963 – 2010 | Genre: Surrealist Animation | Paprika (2006)
Satoshi Kon had a relatively short but extraordinarily influential career. He was born in Japan and aspired to be an animator from a young age, working as a manga artist and in anime writing and designing until his directorial debut Perfect Blue (1997). This first film introduced his themes of blending fiction and reality as it presciently depicts the exploitation and deterioration of a pop idol through beautiful and horrific imagery.
Kon’s use of the hand-drawn style allowed him to thrust the audience into unfamiliar worlds bridging and complicating the real and miraculous. Even his film Tokyo Godfathers (2003), about a trio of homeless people in Tokyo who rescue a baby on Christmas Eve, uses realism in form to depict the fragility of reality and the revelation of fiction in images we assume as the truth. This might appear to be a conceit of analytic language, but Kon uses this recurring motif to comment on the state of the contemporary world. He uses the male gaze in his films featuring female protagonists like in Paprika to explore the relationship between the audience and subject, encouraging analysis of our stigmas and psyches. Kon sadly passed in 2010 at the age of 46, but not before influencing other great directors with his visual language.
Jon Kopaloff / Stringer
25. Chloé Zhao
Bork 1982 | Genre: Drama, Western | Nomadland (2020)
Chloé Zhao is one of the names most recently added to the lexicon of fame that lands her on this list. She was born in Beijing and grew up on Wong Kar-wai films and Western pop influences. When she was still learning English at the age of 15, her parents sent her to Brighton College and then to Mount Holyoke College, after which she attended NYU Tisch and studied under Spike Lee. She speaks of Lee’s candidness, which pushed her to make her first short Daughters in 2010 in the Graduate Studies film program. Zhao’s feature debut was 2009’s The Atlas Mountains, followed by 2015’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation about a Lakota Sioux brother and sister relationship. The film introduced her particular flavor of subjectivity to struggling communities and her semi-documentary style.
In 2017, Zhao forayed into Westerns with The Rider, another film made with non-professional actors that rediscovers the genre of adventure and naturalism. At the 2018 Independent Spirit Awards, she received a $50,000 grant and met Francis McDormand, where they embarked on their journey to make Nomadland. Similarly to her other features, the process of production emulated the exploration, subjectivity, and improvisation of the film. It won the Golden Lion at Venice and then dominated the 2021 Oscars. She became the first woman of color and only the second woman to win Best Director put her at the forefront of Hollywood. The film also made her the most awarded person in a single awards season. She’s now prospectively working on several projects including a sci-fi western adaptation of Dracula.
Atta Kenare/AFP
24. Jafar Panahi
Born 1960 | Genre: Drama, Documentary | This Is Not a Film (2011)
Jafar Panahi is one of the most prominent filmmakers of the Iranian New Wave and has appropriately been acclaimed by the international community and punished by the Iranian government for his neorealistic and humanistic perspectives. He was an army cinematographer during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1982, was held captive for 76 days, and made a TV documentary about his experience. He then enrolled in film school, where he was inspired by Hitchcock, Godard, and Luis Buñuel and met his early collaborators. He continued to work on several documentary films, including The Wounded Heads about an illegal mourning tradition, which he shot in secret and was banned for several years.
Panahi worked for several years as an assistant director for Abbas Kiarostami before his feature film debut The White Balloon (1995). It garnered international acclaim, becoming the first Iranian film to be recognized (Camera d’Or) at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Golden Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Between 2000 and 2006 he made The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Offside, all highly celebrated but controversial films that he shot in secret and were banned throughout Iran, though they were distributed illegally anyway. In 2010 he was arrested for trying to make a documentary about the disputed 2009 re-election of the president and was convicted to six years of prison and a 20-year ban from filmmaking. In midst of his court appeal in 2011, he broke the ban and made the documentary This Is Not a Film with a camcorder and iPhone. It was smuggled as a surprise entry into Cannes on a USB inside a cake. He has since also made films like Taxi (2015), and now his son Panah is an acclaimed director in his own right. Panahi can now move freely within Iran but cannot leave the country.
Emma McIntyre
23. Park Chan-Wook
Born 1963 | Genre: Crime, Mystery | Oldboy (2003)
Korean director Park Chan-Wook has been one of the most influential filmmakers of world cinema for the entirety of the 21st Century. Originally starting as an art critic after starting a cinema club at Sogang University, he turned to filmmaking after seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo (as many do). He directed his debut feature The Moon Is… the Sun’s Dream in 1992 and Trio in 1997, both unsuccessful projects that forced him to turn to film criticism to make a living and that he has since basically disowned.
Park’s breakthrough was Joint Security Area in 2000, a commercial and critical success that became the most-watched film ever in South Korea. This afforded him the opportunity to make Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) independently, the first of his unofficial Vengeance Trilogy. The others are Oldboy (2003), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and Lady Vengeance (2005). These are the films that cemented Park as a masterful director of twisty, pessimistic, yet cynically comical thrillers. He would return to Cannes with Thirst (2009), The Handmaiden (2016), and in 2022 to win Best Director for Decision to Leave. Ever the innovator, he even directed Night Fishing in 2011 with his brother Park Chan-Kyong entirely on iPhone, which won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival. Park remains an important fixture in world cinema and there isn’t a filmmaker that doesn’t perk up at the mention of a new project of his.
imdb
22. Oscar Micheaux
1884 – 1951 | Genre: Drama | Within Our Gates (1920)
Oscar Micheaux is often credited as the first major African-American filmmaker. Born on a farm in Illinois to a former Kentucky slave, he worked several careers as a young man, including homesteading in South Dakota, before starting a publishing career with The Chicago Defender. He wrote seven novels, including The Homesteader in 1918, an autobiographic account of his experiences there. George Johnson, the manager of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first producer of race movies, offered to adapt it but resisted Micheaux’s attempts to direct it.
Micheaux instead founded the Micheaux Film and Book Company of Sioux City and made The Homesteader(1919) as its first project. It was met with critical and commercial success, setting the stage for Micheaux to produce Within Our Gates in 1920. This film was sometimes considered a response to Birth of a Nation (1915), and showcases Micheaux’s prowess as a director. His films defied African American stereotypes in white films and portrayed contemporary race relations without shying away from difficult topics. They were targeted towards middle- and lower-class audiences and were meant to portray the truth of life in a racial state. Sadly, many of these are lost to time, but those that aren’t, like Micheaux’s legacy, will remain an integral part of film history forever.
Robin L Marshall / Stringer
21. Julie Dash
Born 1952 | Genre: Drama | Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Julie Dash is one of the filmmakers part of the UCLA coalition known as the L.A. Rebellion. This refers to the first African and African American filmmakers to study film at UCLA, seeking to create experimental and unconventional films to challenge prejudice and gatekeeping in Hollywood. After several well-regarded shorts, Dash’s debut feature Daughters of the Dust was the first feature film directed by an African American woman to be generally distributed in the United States and was added to the National Film Registry in 2004 and would later be the inspiration for Beyonce’s monumental 2016 album Lemonade.
Dash’s themes and style share a common theme with the mission of the L.A. Rebellion. Her films portray the realities and hardships of the lives of African Americans, especially Black women, and especially in contrast to the representation in Blaxploitation films. An important theme to her is the resilience and inheritance of African American culture. She interrogates through subjectivity and great empathy the trauma of structural racism and how it endures in the culture. She emphasizes the reclamation of these cultural nuances for the betterment of the people, and her impact on African American cinema cannot be overstated.
Mike Marsland
20. Asghar Farhadi
Born 1972 | Genre: Drama | A Separation (2011)
This Iranian director has been one of the most important filmmakers in the world for over two decades, being included on the Time 100 and receiving the French Legion of Honour in the same year. He started out making 8 mm and 16 mm films for the Iranian Youth Cinema Society and writing plays for IRIB before moving into features with Dancing in the Dust in 2003, already earning him nominations at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. His breakthrough came later with A Separation, celebrated for its nuanced depiction of Iranian culture through difficult morality. He would win Best International Feature at the Oscars for this and for The Salesman (2016), the first Iranian to do so. He has also directed French and Spanish films like The Past (2013) and Everybody Knows (2018).
Farhadi’s films are known for their ability to complicate moral conflicts across class, gender, and religious differences. They are often brutally nuanced and imply an intricate social network, remaining fair yet subjective to its complex characters. He isn’t formally flashy, sticking to a documentary style that treats its stories with an open-mindedness integral to the fabric of the real lives they represent. Farhadi criticizes inequalities in societal structures with subtlety, often veiling statements on religion with clever visual icons like in Dancing in the Dust’s opening and in Beautiful City (2004). His influences include the great masters of previous generations, and those he influenced still intently anticipate his next masterpiece.
Amy Sussman
19. John Woo
Born 1946 | Genre: Action | Face/Off (1997)
There is perhaps nobody as important to modern action films as this Hong Kong filmmaker. He established a genre named “heroic bloodshed”, which pretty much sums up what his films are all about. He is known for popularizing bullet ballet, Mexican standoffs, and gun-fu, a style imitated countless times in Hong Kong and American action films. He grew up underprivileged with a Christian background, evident in his films, as is influenced by the French New Wave and classic revisionist Westerns.
After a successful career in Hong Kong working with Jackie Chan that drew international acclaim, later moved to Hollywood to direct action stars in some of their most successful movies, including Mission: Impossible 2(2000). His style involves shooting action scenes with multiple cameras at varied frame rates to create opera-like choreography. His slow-motion shots have been recreated and parodied endlessly. The kineticism of his scenes often comes from dedication to craft, sometimes using several minute-long unbroken shots to showcase his spectacular location choice. His inventiveness and dynamic form have transformed action films multiple times over, earning him endless adoration from the entire film community.
V. Shantaram
18. V. Shantaram
1901 – 1990 | Genre: Drama | Pinjara (1972)
Shantaram Rajaram Vankudre, affectionately known as Annasaheb in the industry, had one of the longest and most illustrious careers on this list, spanning almost 70 years. He was one of the first filmmakers to use the empathy machine of cinema as an instrument of social change. He started as an actor and musician before directing his first film Netaji Palkar in 1927, setting the stage for him to found the Prabhat Film Company (the first bilingual studio, making both Marathi and Hindi films) and then Rajkamal Kalamandir, one of the most renowned studios in the country.
His pursuit of social justice and exposure to bigotry, injustice, and inhumanism was charged with a zeal that gave him an edge in his commercial films. His film Swajyache Toran (Flag of Self-rule) had to be retitled to Udaykal (1931) by the British-run Censor Board for its pro-independence implications. Manoos (1939), about a policeman’s love for a prostitute, was made as a counterpoint to romantic depression in the youth following 1936’s Devdas, and was beloved and praised by Charlie Chaplin. After independence, he started hitting his stride with bold themes and mass appeal with Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957) and Pinjara (1972) and was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 (named after another member of this list), as well as the Padma Vibhushan posthumously, the second-highest civilian award in India. His work continues to be taught in film schools and inspire millions of young filmmakers.
17. Yasujirō Ozu
1903 – 1963 | Genre: Drama | Tokyo Story (1953)
This Japanese filmmaker is the first of the exalted “old masters” of cinema on this list. He was instrumental in the creation of the classical Japanese cinema style, influenced by old Hollywood in his silent era and moving into an abstract style post-war. His first film was Sword of Penitence in 1927, now lost as much of the Japanese films of that era sadly are. He made I Was Born, But… in 1932, acclaimed as the first work of social criticism in Japanese cinema. During World War 2, he was conscripted into the military and was heavily censored and reluctantly drafted to make a propaganda film that he later destroyed.
Upon his return to Japan after the war, he joined the Ofuna studios and made several well-received and commercially successful films, including his masterpiece Tokyo Story, which remains near the top of the Sight and Sound Top 100 list to this day. His trademark style features minimalist Japanese aesthetics depicting the minutiae of middle-class life. He rejects artificial formal techniques like continuity editing, transitions, non-diegetic music, or camera movements, preferring static low-angle “tatami shots” that feel dissociating and cold. Human characters aren’t given subjectivity and are often as much part of the blocking as environmental features and props. He downplays traditionally emotional, melodramatic moments, innovating structure with ellipses and pillow shots. Ozu’s films mostly only played to foreign audiences after his death, at which point he inspired countless other monumental filmmakers and cemented his legacy.
Pascal Le Segretain
16. Bong Joon-Ho
Born 1969 | Genre: Comedy, Horror, Science Fiction | Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon-Ho is probably the director on this list most talked about in recent years, winning 3 Oscars in 2020 and transforming the awards show and many Americans’ attitudes towards foreign cinema. All of his films have been produced in his native South Korea, the first of which, Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), garnered a cult following after the critical and commercial success of Memories of Murder (2003) and The Host (2006). The latter was his first big-budget work and signaled a change in scale for the Korean film industry. He would go on to direct some American co-productions with some of the biggest American stars.
In 2019, Parasite quickly became the uncontested masterpiece of the year, unanimously winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes and sweeping the 2020 Oscars. It was the first non-English language film to win Best Picture and the first script by an Asian to win. It exemplifies his mastery over and ability to switch between a variety of tones and genres, often turning comedy into horror mid-scene. His process of making Parasite was well-documented, especially as his hyper-detailed storyboards went viral. He is known of his biting critique of capitalistic exploitation and class structure, both in modern-day Korea and in the future of civilization. His next film with Robert Pattinson, Mickey17 supposedly releasing this year, will be much the same, and here at A Hot Set, we’ll be intently watching.
Maarten De Boer
15. Alfonso Cuarón
Born 1961 | Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction | Children of Men (2006)
There are few working filmmakers as celebrated as this Mexican director. He is the recipient of five Academy Awards from only twelve nominations, a staggering success rate by even the highest standard. After starting in television in Mexico in the mid-80s, he landed his first feature directing gig in 1991’s Sólo con tu pareja, which was a big enough hit to land him an episode of Fallen Angels in 1993 for Showtime. His career quickly blossomed from there in the US.
Cuarón’s breakthrough came back in Mexico with Y tu mama también in 2001, a provocative film that launched him into the spotlight and an Oscar nomination. He went on to direct the incredibly successful third Harry Potter film in 2004 and Children of Men in 2006, setting the stage for his creation of the production and distribution company Esperanto Filmoj. His awards spree started with the extraordinarily ambitious Gravity in 2010, a smash hit Best Picture Oscar winner that made Cuarón the first Latin American to win Best Director. His latest film with Netflix, Roma (2018), based on his childhood in Mexico City, was acclaimed to say the least, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and then Best Director, Foreign Language Film, and Cinematography at the Oscars, a traditional Hollywood crowning moment. Cuarón now has an overall TV deal with Apple and will continue to produce great works for years to come.
Jeff Spicer / Stringer
14. Steve McQueen
Born 1969 | Genre: Drama, Neo-noir | 12 Years a Slave (2013)
Sir Steve Rodney McQueen is a celebrated British filmmaker, appointee as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his work in the visual arts, and a recipient of the Turner Prize, the highest award given to a British visual artist. Although his style is experimental and even sometimes revolutionary, he is best known for the intense subject matter of his films. His first feature Hunger (2008), about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, won the Caméra d’Or, making him the first Brit to win that award and cementing his breakthrough as a vital British voice.
He moved on to an even more powerful film, Shame, in 2011, a provocative look at the life of a sex addict starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. It was 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, however, that would bring him the most success. Based on Solomon Northup’s biography, it made him the first black director of a Best Picture Oscar winner and made Lupita Nyong’o the sixth black winner of Best Supporting Actress. He has become known for his formalism and willingness to engage with difficult subject matter with power and subjective intensity. His is set to return to feature filmmaking with Blitz, about Londoners during the Blitz of WWII on Apple TV+.
Luis lemus
13. Emilio Fernández
1904 - 1986 | Genres: Drama | María Candelaria (1944)
Emilio “El Indio” Fernández Romo was known for being one of the most successful and prolific directors of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 40s and 50s. As is a theme on this list, he was born in a time of revolution and joined the Mexican Revolution as a teenager. After escaping Mexico after being captured during a failed insurrection, he found his way to Chicago and later Los Angeles. His work as a stonemason for Hollywood studio construction led him to act as an extra and a double. He was inspired to create his films in 1930 by a private screening with Sergei Eisenstein, whose abandoned film Que viva Mexico! partially motivated his move back to Mexico.
After almost a decade of moving up the ranks to play starring roles, he directed his debut, La Isla de la pasión(1941). His breakthrough came with his next film Maria Candelaria (1944), which would be the first Latin American film at the Cannes Film Festival before winning the Palm d’Or. El Indio would go on to make several award-winning festival films, including La Perla (1947), which was added to the National Film Registry in 2002. His films and their productions promoted his national customs and the values of the Mexican Revolution. His passion for his people and their cinema has cemented Fernández as one of the greatest Mexican filmmakers. There is also a rumor (unconfirmed) that he is the model for the Oscar statue.
12. Hayao Miyazaki
Born 1941 | Genre: Fantasy Animation | Spirited Away (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, is as integral a part of many kids’ childhoods as Pixar or Disney. Born during WWII to the director of a fighter plane parts manufacturing company, his feelings of isolation, apocalyptic dread, and profound loss are translated to screen through the eyes of an imaginative child. He started his career as a successful animator and graphic novelist before co-founding Studio Ghibli in 1985. Its first film was Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), the first example of his anti-fascist views and airplane fanaticism. His 2001 film Spirited Away was a seminal masterpiece that would become the highest-grossing film in Japan for 20 years and propel him and the studio to international acclaim.
Miyazaki often criticized the treatment of animation and the state of anime and can be credited with a revolution in the industry. Many of his films, even those made for young audiences, feature difficult themes and conflicted protagonists, driving the movement of animation from children’s entertainment to a genuine artform. His films often include allusions, if not direct references, to WWII, post-war trauma, Westernization, and the tendency of fascism and industrialization to destroy the environment and man’s connection to it. His process involves deriving stories from initial drawings and art, emphasizing the beauty and soft fantasy of his worlds. He has also been known for his complex female characters and has been described as a feminist in his management of the studio. Just this year, he won an Oscar for his latest film The Boy and the Heron(2023), and he is reported to be working on yet another one soon.
11. Dadasaheb Phalke
1870 – 1944 | Genre: Drama | Raja Harishchandra (1913)
Dhundiraj Govind Phalke was popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke, and appropriately so, as he is regarded as the Father of Indian cinema. His debut feature Raja Harishchandra was the first Indian feature-length film, the first of a staggering 95 features in his 19-year career. In 1911, Phalke watched Amazing Animals at a Bombay Picture Palace and was immediately enraptured by the spectacle cinema, resolving to make his own. He gathered money to visit London, met with Cecil Hepworth, one of the founders of the British film industry, and bought a Williamson camera and Kodak raw film. He founded Phalke Films Company upon his return to India.
Raja Harishchandra was a monumental production, crewed and cast via published newspaper advertisements. Since no women were available to play female roles, the cast was all male actors, with Phalke himself handling the writing, direction, production design, make-up, editing, and film processing due to an obvious lack of professionals. The film was commercially successful and set many of the standards for the burgeoning film industry. Phalke would go on to make many mythological and historical adaptations, as well as adaptations of plays and originals. His last film Gangavataran (1937) was his only talkie. Although Phalke never won any awards, as none existed, in 1969 the Government of India instituted the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest awarded to Indian filmmakers, and a stamp of his face was even released in 1971.
Alberto E. Rodriguez
10. John Singleton
1968 – 2019 | Genre: Drama | Boyz n the Hood (1991)
John Singleton became one of the most successful and celebrated directors in African-American cinema from the moment he stepped onto the scene. He grew up in Los Angeles in a black neighborhood before attending the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He made his debut with Boyz n the Hood (1991) at Cannes, then making him the youngest person and first African-American to be nominated for Best Director. He continued on to make other culturally integral films like Poetic Justice (1993), Shaft (2000), and Baby Boy (2001).
Singleton’s films often very consciously and purposefully represent the African-American experience in urban centers, especially their relationship to masculinity, racism, and generational trauma. He was known for having his finger on the pulse of the culture, launching the acting careers of public figures and rappers like Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, Janet Jackson, and Snoop Dogg. He also followed the traditional “one for them, one for me” pathway, making 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) in between Baby Boy (2001) and independent film Hustle and Flow(2005) to remain commercially relevant. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and, despite his untimely death, remains essential to the history of American cinema.
Matt Winkelmeyer
09. Mira Nair
Born 1957 | Genre: Drama | Mississippi Masala (1991)
This Indian-American filmmaker is known to be a bold visionary, specializing in films for diverse audiences about international Indian society. She began her career in documentaries exploring Indian tradition. After her student films at Harvard in the streets of Old Delhi, she won some acclaim at the American Film Festival for So Far From India (1982). She used her success to raise $130,000 for her third project India Cabaret (1985) about the exploitation of female strippers in Bombay, criticized by her family during an extremely conservative period in India’s history.
Nair’s debut feature was Salaam Bombay! in 1988, where she strived for authenticity by using real street children to portray the tragedy of their lives. It won her the Camera D’or and Prix du Public at Cannes and allowed her and her co-writer Sooni Taraporevala to continue challenging conventional audiences with Mississippi Masala in 1991, a Denzel Washington movie about romance emerging from prejudiced communities. Her next notable film, Monsoon Wedding (2001), would cast some of her friends and make her the first woman to win the Golden Lion at Venice. Throughout her career, she was known to never shy from controversy, with her 1996 film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love even getting banned in India. Her dedication to authenticity is evident through her use of non-professional actors, as is her compassion for the marginalized people and communities she portrays. She prioritizes pacing in her films, using rhythm in editing to propel her stories and create empathy. Like many of the greatest directors, she is drawn to collaboration and claims that her biggest strength is working with people.
08. Wong Kar-Wai
Born 1958 | Genre: Romance, Neo-noir, Drama | In the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-wai BBS has been one of the most stylish directors since the 90s, heavily influencing contemporary directors with his vivid combination of atmospheric sound and cinematography. He was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong as a child, beginning a screenwriting career in TV in the early 80s.
Wong used his connections to get invited to become a partner in an independent production company In-Gear and directed the next of the popular gangster films of the time, As Tears Go By in 1988. Its success allowed him to make Days of Being Wild (1990), with several famous movie stars like Maggie Cheung, starting his infatuation with obsessed hopeless romantics. He then began his experimentation in what he called “a very complex tapestry” of narrative structures with Ashes of Time (1994). The film’s long and arduous production compelled him to start a small project that would be his breakthrough, Chungking Express (1994), followed by its second half Fallen Angels (1995). His next film Happy Together (1997) would mark a new stage in his artistic development, catapulting him into one of the greatest films of all time, In the Mood for Love(2000). Since then, he has made several films with much awards attention and said in 2014 that he’s only halfway done.
07. Guillermo Del Toro
Born 1964 | Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror | Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
This Mexican director is another whose name is inescapable for any modern movie buff. He is close friends with the aforementioned Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu, together known as the “Three Amigos of Cinema”. Del Toro’s filmography is extraordinarily varied, spanning three decades, nearly every genre in cinema, and multiple kinds of animation. He started in Mexican television, moving quickly to his debut feature Cronos(1992). He spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up artist with Dick Smith before forming his own company, Necropia, as well as the Guadalajara Film Festival. He then went on to make a variety of comic book adaptations before going back to Spanish-language films.
Del Toro made two films set during the Spanish Civil War, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, both about the tyrannical rule of Francisco Franco. These films feature fantastical elements blended into historical fiction to portray political conflict as two sides of a fairy tale – one as “don’t wander into the woods” authoritarianism and the other as anarchic and anti-establishment. Films like Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015) were similar in their use of genre and futuristic or gothic style to underscore a more subversive theme. His 2018 film The Shape of Water similarly explores authoritarianism in the Cold War through a science fiction metaphor, winning Best Picture and Best Director for Del Toro at the Oscars. Del Toro has since made an acclaimed adaptation of the original Pinocchio in 2022 has become a champion of animation as a medium, and has said he will only make animated films going forward.
Arturo Holmes
06. Ava DuVernay
Born 1972 | Genre: Documentary, Drama, Fantasy | Selma (2014)
Ava DuVernay is another American household name that any film or TV buff is familiar with. Hailing from Long Beach, CA, she began her career with a passion for journalism and helped cover the controversial O.J. Simpson murder trial at CBS News. After moving into public relations, she opened her PR firm The Duvernay Agency in 1999. She is known for her ventures that bolster other women of color, including Urban Beauty Collective, Urban Thought Collective, and her production company African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement.
DuVernay’s narrative feature film debut was I Will Follow (2011), inspired by her aunt Denise Sexton. Upon its critical success, she left her job in publicity and devoted herself to promoting socially-conscious stories through film and TV. She then began her crusade of breaking consecutive glass ceilings. Some of these include becoming the first African-American woman to win the US Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for Middle of Nowhere and the first to be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director in 2015 for Selma. Her work became known for the sheer power of its ethos and calls to action. She went on to expand her career to create the drama Series Queen Sugar in 2015 and to direct the visionary documentary 13th in 2016. News has circulated in recent years about her next moves in documentary and film, and she’s not done yet.
Evan Agostini
05. Ousmane Sembéne
1923 – 2007 | Genre: Drama | Black Girl (1966)
Senegalese director Ousmane Sembéne is often remembered as the grandfather of African cinema and as one of the greatest African authors ever. He preferred to be credited in the French style as Sembéne Ousmane to subvert the colonial naming convention. After service in the Senegalese Tirailleurs during WWII, he stowed away to France and taught himself to read and write French. He started writing novels featuring black characters and themes of cultural oppression, including his masterpiece God’s Bits of Wood (1960). He realized that while his novels could reach cultural elites, cinema was “the people’s night school” and it could influence a broader African audience.
His debut feature La Noire de… (Black Girl) was the first feature film ever released by a sub-Saharan African director and won the Prix Jean Vigo, immediately drawing international acclaim to Sembéne and African film generally. Sembéne was then able to finally produce several films like Mandabi (1968) in his native Wolof. His films are famous for their critique of colonialist exploitation and its ties to the failings of religion and the new African bourgeoisie. The largest influence on his life was his maternal grandmother, who raised and greatly influenced him, and his work often centers around the strength of black women through social realism. His work endures as the memory of a vital force in the rise of independent African cinema, and its impact has and will inspire generations of filmmakers to come.
Nicolas Guerin
04. Abbas Kiarostami
1940 – 2016 | Genre: Drama | Taste of Cherry (1997)
Part of the second wave of Iranian New Wave, Abbas Kiarostami was known as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, with his films consistently landing on the Sight and Sound Greatest Movies of All Time polls. The Iranian New Wave was a movement that started in the late 60s, partially inspired by Italian Neorealism, that emphasizes poetic imagery and political and philosophical content. In 1970, at the start of the new wave, Kiarostami helped set up a film department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, which became one of Iran’s most prolific studios.
Koarostami’s works are said to capture the unique essence of Persian poetry through neorealist techniques, transforming classical poetry to reflect the modern world. He also uses the duality and fragility of life and death to explore the human condition of his subjects, such as the lighting of light and dark scenes in Taste of Cherry(1997) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). He frequently uses experimental documentary-style filmmaking to create an ambiguity of truth, like in Ten (2002), in which he left a camera rolling on extreme close-ups of his actors with only suggestions on what to do as they drove around Tehran. Kiarostami has repeatedly redefined the film form by forcing and expecting consciousness from audiences, and his influence will endure in global film culture.
Nik Wheeler
03. Satyajit Ray
1921 – 1992 | Genre: Drama, Comedy | Pather Panchali (1955)
Widely considered one of the most influential directors ever, Satyajit Ray was part of the Parallel Cinema movement originating in West Bengal in the 50s, a precursor to the Indian, French, and Japanese New Waves of the next decade. This movement, and Ray himself, were heavily inspired by Italian Neorealism, an influence that is apparent from their films. After working as a visual artist, Ray made his debut feature based on the 1928 novel Pather Panchali with only a storyboard, an inexperienced crew, mostly amateur actors, and a barely sufficient budget supplemented with a government loan. It would go on to win several awards and capture international attention. The next two films of his Apu Trilogy, Aparjito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959), opened to similar festival acclaim and cemented him as a master filmmaker.
Though Ray would win numerous major international awards, his biggest accomplishment is his distinctive, virtuosic style. He was known for his films about complex, often difficult, and tragic subject matter and the beauty of humanism. He grounds his films and paces them with long, slow takes to imbue the actors with authenticity. He was especially known as a master of composition, filling his frames with metaphors and symbols, with low-angle shots that emphasize the diminutiveness of the characters. His photographic style attempts to capture the truth without artificiality, and refuses to obstruct it with edits or showy movement. His use of sound, especially silence, creates evocative moods and atmospheres that connect us with the characters’ emotions. Ray has inspired cinema from all over the world, from some of the most well-known and greatest names and movements to new promising young filmmakers. His films and his legacy have been and will continue to be studied for decades to come.
Jamie McCarthy
02. Spike Lee
Born 1957 | Genre: Drama, Comedy, Crime | Do the Right Thing (1989)
Shelton Jackson Lee is an Atlanta-born titan of the American film industry. Not only did he transform the representation of people of color in American film, he has also taught hundreds of young filmmakers at the NYU Tisch School of Arts. His 1985 debut She’s Gotta Have It is often considered the kickoff for the American independent film movement of the late 80s and 90s. With his 1989 film Do the Right Thing, he introduced his trademark “cinema of interruptions”, using quick, poignant editing to express racial tension on the hottest day of summer. This film also kickstarted the careers of a slew of greats like Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro, a showcase of Lee’s keen eye for talent.
Spike made several other seminal films about the African-American plight and reclamation of power, including Malcolm X (1992) and recently Blackkklansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). He also made several successful big-budget films, including 25th Hour (2002) and Inside Man (2006), which didn’t quite have the biting politics but retained the cultural awareness and style of the others. His films have pioneered or at least transformed filmmaking techniques like the “double-dolly” shot and the use of third-wall-breaking Greek choruses to directly explore his themes. Lee’s next project will be a remake of the 1963 Kurosawa film High and Low, with his frequent collaborator Denzel Washington to star. Given his legacy and enduring grasp of the cultural moment, it will undoubtedly captivate the film community (including A Hot Set).
01. Akira Kurosawa
1910 – 1998 | Genre: Epic, Drama, Crime
Akira Kurosawa might be the most important director of all time, and perhaps one of the most important people. He was named one of the “Asians of the Century” by AsianWeek magazine and CNN and amassed immense accolades during and after his six-decade film career. He was a multi-hyphenate, involved in all aspects of production, and his perfectly paced writing, dynamic cinematography, expressive blocking, and unconventional editing shattered existing filmmaking rules and created a slew of new ones.
Kursoawa’s international breakthrough was Rashomon in 1950, which was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, opening Western film markets to Japanese films. His growing reputation allowed generations of future generations to find success with Western audiences, and his status has only appreciated with time. He went on to make many more films that landed on all-time lists like Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1963), both of which inspired some of the next greatest filmmakers and their most important projects. Many directors, like Satyajit Ray who won an award named after Kurosawa, cite his films as foundational to their film education and style. Kurosawa and his films have built a legacy much greater than he could have ever conceived, and they will inspire and teach generations to come.