Top 420 Directors
The directors below are ranked based on how the quality of films that they directed, including films not on the master list. Directors get credit only on films for which they were credited unless no director was credited for the film. In this situation, the director identified by the Internet Movie Database is treated as a credited director for the film. If more than one director is credited for a film, points for the film are divided evenly among the listed directors.
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Steven Spielberg
- Stanley Kubrick
- Martin Scorsese
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Billy Wilder
- John Ford
- Howard Hawks
- David Lean
- John Huston
- Frank Capra
- Orson Welles
- Akira Kurosawa
- Victor Fleming
- George Cukor
- Ridley Scott
- Michael Curtiz
- Woody Allen
- Charles Chaplin
- William Wyler
- Ingmar Bergman
- James Cameron
- Elia Kazan
- Robert Altman
- Fritz Lang
- Roman Polanski
- Federico Fellini
- Quentin Tarantino
- Luis Buñuel
- George Lucas
- Jean Renoir
- François Truffaut
- Rob Reiner
- Fred Zinnemann
- Joel Coen
- Robert Wise
- Robert Zemeckis
- George Stevens
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Vincente Minnelli
- Milos Forman
- Preston Sturges
- Peter Jackson
- David Lynch
- Mike Nichols
- Sidney Lumet
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Sergio Leone
- Stanley Donen
- F. W. Murnau
- Carol Reed
- D. W. Griffith
- Leo McCarey
- Jonathan Demme
- James Whale
- Clint Eastwood
- Sergei M. Eisenstein
- Terry Gilliam
- Vittorio De Sica
- Oliver Stone
- Sam Peckinpah
- Brian De Palma
- Arthur Penn
- Nicholas Ray
- Krzysztof Kieslowski
- David Fincher
- Peter Weir
- William Friedkin
- Satyajit Ray
- George Roy Hill
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- John Carpenter
- Michelangelo Antonioni
- Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Spike Lee
- John Lasseter
- Michael Powell
- Mel Brooks
- Blake Edwards
- Tim Burton
- Robert Bresson
- John Frankenheimer
- Ang Lee
- Frank Darabont
- Norman Jewison
- Don Siegel
- Sydney Pollack
- Bryan Singer
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Buster Keaton
- William A. Wellman
- John Schlesinger
- David Hand
- King Vidor
- Gene Kelly
- Michael Mann
- Josef von Sternberg
- Werner Herzog
- Max Ophüls
- Wim Wenders
- Jacques Tourneur
- Yasujiro Ozu
- Louis Malle
- Robert Mulligan
- George A. Romero
- Roberto Rossellini
- Otto Preminger
- Sam Wood
- Irvin Kershner
- Terrence Malick
- John Landis
- David Cronenberg
- Alain Resnais
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Steven Soderbergh
- Luchino Visconti
- John Sturges
- Lewis Milestone
- Alexander Mackendrick
- Marcel Carné
- Barry Levinson
- Hal Ashby
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Raoul Walsh
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Michael Cimino
- Sam Raimi
- Danny Boyle
- John McTiernan
- Mark Sandrich
- John G. Avildsen
- Nicolas Roeg
- Ron Howard
- Richard Lester
- Curtis Hanson
- Jacques Tati
- Jean Cocteau
- Charles Laughton
- Bob Fosse
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Robert Aldrich
- Stephen Frears
- Baz Luhrmann
- Mel Gibson
- Terry Jones
- Emeric Pressburger
- Harold Ramis
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Paul Verhoeven
- Yimou Zhang
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- John Boorman
- John Hughes
- James L. Brooks
- Alan J. Pakula
- Wes Craven
- Richard Donner
- Rouben Mamoulian
- Cameron Crowe
- Mike Leigh
- Erich von Stroheim
- John Cassavetes
- Sam Mendes
- John Sayles
- John Woo
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Robert Rossen
- Douglas Sirk
- Jean Vigo
- Peter Bogdanovich
- Robert Stevenson
- Tod Browning
- Richard Linklater
- Pedro Almodóvar
- Jane Campion
- Stanley Kramer
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Martin Ritt
- Christopher Nolan
- Samuel Fuller
- Luc Besson
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Mike Newell
- Anthony Minghella
- Tony Scott
- Gus Van Sant
- James Ivory
- Philip Kaufman
- Kar Wai Wong
- Jim Jarmusch
- Abbas Kiarostami
- Laurence Olivier
- Lloyd Bacon
- Dennis Hopper
- Richard Attenborough
- George Miller
- Henry King
- René Clair
- Abel Gance
- Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Tony Richardson
- Kevin Costner
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet
- Clyde Bruckman
- Anthony Mann
- Alan Parker
- Richard Fleischer
- Garry Marshall
- (tie) Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski
- M. Night Shyamalan
- Clarence Brown
- W. S. Van Dyke
- Tobe Hooper
- Lars von Trier
- Charles Crichton
- Guy Hamilton
- Herbert Ross
- Robert Hamer
- Merian C. Cooper
- Richard Marquand
- Norman Z. McLeod
- Robert J. Flaherty
- Peter Yates
- Adrian Lyne
- Eric Rohmer
- Wes Anderson
- Claude Berri
- Giuseppe Tornatore
- Neil Jordan
- Amy Heckerling
- Leni Riefenstahl
- Randal Kleiser
- Kevin Smith
- Andrzej Wajda
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Edward Zwick
- Bill Forsyth
- Robert Redford
- Phil Alden Robinson
- Jacques Demy
- Bob Rafelson
- Jerry Zucker
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Ivan Reitman
- Bruce Beresford
- Jules Dassin
- John Madden
- Pier Paolo Pasolini
- William Dieterle
- Chris Columbus
- Jay Roach
- John Waters
- Errol Morris
- Hamilton Luske
- Lasse Hallström
- Penny Marshall
- Bruce Robinson
- Lawrence Kasdan
- Robert Wiene
- Robert Benton
- Michael Apted
- Ben Sharpsteen
- Ken Loach
- Lindsay Anderson
- Terence Young
- John Badham
- Claude Chabrol
- Ron Shelton
- Edward F. Cline
- Walter Lang
- Arthur Hiller
- Jerome Robbins
- Spike Jonze
- William Keighley
- Richard Brooks
- Roberto Benigni
- Dziga Vertov
- Henry Hathaway
- Robert Rodriguez
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- Frank Lloyd
- Edward Dmytryk
- Michael Ritchie
- Jacques Rivette
- Alexander Payne
- Brad Bird
- Todd Haynes
- Michel Gondry
- Warren Beatty
- Roland Emmerich
- Richard Kelly
- Gore Verbinski
- Robert Siodmak
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- George Sidney
- Henry Koster
- Irving Rapper
- Gregory La Cava
- Sofia Coppola
- Edmund Goulding
- Nick Park
- Atom Egoyan
- Hugh Hudson
- Wolfgang Reitherman
- Victor Sjöström
- Barry Sonnenfeld
- George Seaton
- Fernando Meirelles
- Ken Russell
- Jan de Bont
- Michael Bay
- David Zucker
- Dario Argento
- Mark Robson
- Delbert Mann
- Robin Hardy
- Jim Sharman
- Fred Schepisi
- Darren Aronofsky
- Terry Zwigoff
- Phillip Noyce
- Costa-Gavras
- Peter Greenaway
- Nagisa Oshima
- Taylor Hackford
- Chris Noonan
- Emile Ardolino
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Cy Endfield
- Lewis Gilbert
- Andrew Davis
- Fred M. Wilcox
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Joel Schumacher
- Gillian Armstrong
- Charles Walters
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Jack Arnold
- Joseph Losey
- Jack Clayton
- David O. Russell
- Bertrand Tavernier
- Michael Moore
- Nora Ephron
- David Butler
- Karl Reisz
- Aleksandr Dovzhenko
- Steve James
- Kenneth Branagh
- Mike Hodges
- Franco Zeffirelli
- Mel Stuart
- Volker Schlöndorff
- Agnès Varda
- Frank Borzage
- Chris Marker
- Joshua Logan
- Louis Feuillade
- Kaige Chen
- Robert Z. Leonard
- Katsuhiro Ôtomo
- Bob Clark
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Peter Cattaneo
- Roland Joffé
- Paul Mazursky
- Marcel Ophüls
- Doug Liman
- René Clément
- Martin Brest
- Charles Vidor
- Rob Minkoff
- Ronald Neame
- Georges Méliès
- Jim Sheridan
- Kon Ichikawa
- Edward Yang
- Tom Tykwer
- Jerry Lewis
- George Marshall
- Guillermo del Toro
- Wayne Wang
- Ousmane Sembene
- David Mamet
- Chantal Akerman
- Clyde Geronimi
- Carl Reiner
- Mira Nair
- Kathryn Bigelow
- John Singleton
- P.J. Hogan
- Walter Hill
- Lina Wertmüller
- Tay Garnett
- Roger Corman
- Edgar G. Ulmer
- Paul Schrader
- Peter Farrelly
- Henry Selick
- Takeshi Kitano
- Alejandro González Iñárritu
- Alex Proyas
- J. Lee Thompson
- Mike Figgis
- Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Stephen Daldry
- Victor Erice
- Guy Ritchie
- (tie) Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
- Todd Solondz
- Jim Abrahams
- Terence Fisher
- Rupert Julian
- Alejandro Amenábar
- Albert Brooks
- D.A. Pennebaker
- Russ Meyer
This page was last modified on April 7, 2008