Top 480 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
- Ridley Scott
- Akira Kurosawa
- Woody Allen
- Victor Fleming
- James Cameron
- Charles Chaplin
- Michael Curtiz
- George Cukor
- Ingmar Bergman
- William Wyler
- Quentin Tarantino
- Robert Altman
- Roman Polanski
- Fritz Lang
- Elia Kazan
- Federico Fellini
- George Lucas
- Joel Coen
- Peter Jackson
- Rob Reiner
- Luis Buñuel
- Robert Zemeckis
- Jean Renoir
- François Truffaut
- Robert Wise
- David Lynch
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Fred Zinnemann
- Milos Forman
- Sidney Lumet
- Sergio Leone
- Preston Sturges
- Mike Nichols
- George Stevens
- Vincente Minnelli
- Clint Eastwood
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Ernst Lubitsch
- F. W. Murnau
- Jonathan Demme
- Carol Reed
- Stanley Donen
- Terry Gilliam
- Leo McCarey
- Sam Peckinpah
- David Fincher
- James Whale
- John Carpenter
- Oliver Stone
- Brian De Palma
- Peter Weir
- D. W. Griffith
- William Friedkin
- Vittorio De Sica
- Sergei M. Eisenstein
- Nicholas Ray
- Krzysztof Kieslowski
- Mel Brooks
- John Lasseter
- Arthur Penn
- George Roy Hill
- Tim Burton
- Satyajit Ray
- Ang Lee
- Michelangelo Antonioni
- Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Michael Powell
- Spike Lee
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- David Cronenberg
- Robert Bresson
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- George A. Romero
- Frank Darabont
- John Frankenheimer
- Bryan Singer
- Michael Mann
- Don Siegel
- John Landis
- David Hand
- Sydney Pollack
- Norman Jewison
- Blake Edwards
- John Schlesinger
- John Sturges
- Yasujiro Ozu
- Sam Raimi
- Irvin Kershner
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Buster Keaton
- Werner Herzog
- Christopher Nolan
- King Vidor
- Gene Kelly
- Louis Malle
- Danny Boyle
- Steven Soderbergh
- Wim Wenders
- Max Ophüls
- John McTiernan
- Terrence Malick
- Alain Resnais
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Robert Mulligan
- William A. Wellman
- Otto Preminger
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Jacques Tourneur
- Alexander Mackendrick
- Barry Levinson
- Paul Verhoeven
- Josef von Sternberg
- Raoul Walsh
- Nicolas Roeg
- Sam Wood
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Harold Ramis
- Robert Aldrich
- Luchino Visconti
- Michael Cimino
- Hal Ashby
- Curtis Hanson
- John G. Avildsen
- Roberto Rossellini
- Charles Laughton
- Richard Donner
- Lewis Milestone
- Marcel Carné
- John Cassavetes
- Richard Lester
- John Hughes
- John Boorman
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Richard Linklater
- Ron Howard
- Terry Jones
- Bob Fosse
- Alan J. Pakula
- Cameron Crowe
- Wes Craven
- Jacques Tati
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Pedro Almodóvar
- Mike Leigh
- Baz Luhrmann
- Jean Cocteau
- Emeric Pressburger
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Stephen Frears
- Mark Sandrich
- Mel Gibson
- Sam Mendes
- John Sayles
- James L. Brooks
- Yimou Zhang
- Robert Rossen
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet
- Luc Besson
- Jean Vigo
- John Woo
- Kar Wai Wong
- Erich von Stroheim
- Samuel Fuller
- Robert Stevenson
- Douglas Sirk
- Gus Van Sant
- Tony Scott
- Peter Bogdanovich
- Rouben Mamoulian
- George Miller
- Tod Browning
- Martin Ritt
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Anthony Minghella
- Mike Newell
- Jane Campion
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Stanley Kramer
- Wes Anderson
- Philip Kaufman
- Abbas Kiarostami
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Anthony Mann
- Jim Jarmusch
- Lars von Trier
- M. Night Shyamalan
- Richard Attenborough
- James Ivory
- (tie) Andy Wachowski and
Larry Wachowski
- Alan Parker
- Tobe Hooper
- Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Dennis Hopper
- Brad Bird
- Eric Rohmer
- Guy Hamilton
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Henry King
- Adrian Lyne
- Robert Hamer
- Peter Yates
- Garry Marshall
- Tony Richardson
- Richard Marquand
- Ivan Reitman
- Charles Crichton
- Richard Fleischer
- Clyde Bruckman
- Kevin Costner
- Merian C. Cooper
- Laurence Olivier
- Michel Gondry
- Randal Kleiser
- Abel Gance
- René Clair
- Chris Columbus
- Amy Heckerling
- Jay Roach
- Gore Verbinski
- Lloyd Bacon
- Kevin Smith
- Alexander Payne
- Edward Zwick
- Norman Z. McLeod
- John Waters
- Bob Rafelson
- Herbert Ross
- Neil Jordan
- Andrzej Wajda
- Giuseppe Tornatore
- Hamilton Luske
- Darren Aronofsky
- Bruce Robinson
- Bill Forsyth
- Errol Morris
- Claude Berri
- Jacques Demy
- Jerry Zucker
- W. S. Van Dyke
- Ron Shelton
- Spike Jonze
- Ken Loach
- Michael Apted
- Clarence Brown
- Robert J. Flaherty
- Robert Redford
- Leni Riefenstahl
- Ben Sharpsteen
- Sofia Coppola
- Phil Alden Robinson
- Todd Haynes
- Terence Young
- Pier Paolo Pasolini
- John Madden
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- Fernando Meirelles
- Robert Wiene
- Robert Benton
- Lawrence Kasdan
- Penny Marshall
- Lindsay Anderson
- Richard Kelly
- Jules Dassin
- Henry Hathaway
- Lasse Hallström
- William Keighley
- Wolfgang Reitherman
- Dario Argento
- Bruce Beresford
- Andrew Stanton
- Jerome Robbins
- Roberto Benigni
- Michael Ritchie
- Guillermo del Toro
- Robert Rodriguez
- John Badham
- Edward F. Cline
- David Zucker
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- Barry Sonnenfeld
- Robert Siodmak
- Jacques Rivette
- Roland Emmerich
- Warren Beatty
- Atom Egoyan
- Gregory La Cava
- Arthur Hiller
- Mike Hodges
- William Dieterle
- Robin Hardy
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Richard Brooks
- Terry Zwigoff
- Ken Russell
- Claude Chabrol
- Jack Clayton
- Victor Sjöström
- Walter Lang
- Dziga Vertov
- Jan de Bont
- Henry Koster
- Nick Park
- Michael Bay
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Katsuhiro Ôtomo
- Phillip Noyce
- Fred M. Wilcox
- Taylor Hackford
- Hugh Hudson
- Chris Marker
- George Sidney
- George Seaton
- Doug Liman
- Jim Sharman
- Frank Lloyd
- Joseph Losey
- Trey Parker
- Mark Robson
- Costa-Gavras
- Emile Ardolino
- Martin Brest
- Michael Moore
- Edmund Goulding
- Henry Selick
- Walter Hill
- Nagisa Oshima
- David O. Russell
- Edward Dmytryk
- Steve James
- Irving Rapper
- Agnès Varda
- Joel Schumacher
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Chris Noonan
- Edgar Wright
- Carl Reiner
- Jack Arnold
- Paul Greengrass
- Andrew Davis
- Peter Greenaway
- Peter Farrelly
- Delbert Mann
- Takeshi Kitano
- J. Lee Thompson
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Fred Schepisi
- Mel Stuart
- Alejandro Amenábar
- Roland Joffé
- Rob Minkoff
- Terence Fisher
- Lewis Gilbert
- Edgar G. Ulmer
- Bob Clark
- Kenneth Branagh
- Gillian Armstrong
- Jim Sheridan
- Pete Docter
- Michael Haneke
- Nicholas Meyer
- Cy Endfield
- Alejandro González Iñárritu
- Nora Ephron
- Charles Walters
- Michael Anderson
- Joshua Logan
- Bertrand Tavernier
- Clyde Geronimi
- Charles Vidor
- Edward Yang
- Kaige Chen
- Alex Proyas
- Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Aleksandr Dovzhenko
- Karl Reisz
- Tom Tykwer
- Louis Feuillade
- Ronald Neame
- Joe Dante
- Marcel Ophüls
- Guy Ritchie
- Christopher Guest
- Alex Cox
- Georges Méliès
- René Clément
- Mira Nair
- Walter Salles
- Andrew Adamson
- Peter Cattaneo
- Terence Davies
- Kon Ichikawa
- Paul Mazursky
- Roger Corman
- Franco Zeffirelli
- (tie) Gary Trousdale and
Kirk Wise
- Victor Erice
- Wayne Wang
- Ousmane Sembene
- David Butler
- David Anspaugh
- Elem Klimov
- Claude Lanzmann
- Volker Schlöndorff
- Martin Campbell
- Russ Meyer
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- P.J. Hogan
- Robert Z. Leonard
- John Singleton
- Stephen Daldry
- George Marshall
- Mike Figgis
- Jim Abrahams
- Paul Weitz
- Emir Kusturica
- Todd Solondz
- Jerry Lewis
- Ted Kotcheff
- Charles Burnett
- Christian Nyby
- Marcel Pagnol
- John Boulting
- David Mamet
- Frank Borzage
- Rupert Julian
- D.A. Pennebaker
- Budd Boetticher
- James Foley
- James Mangold
- Joe Johnston
- Wilfred Jackson
- Frank Oz
- Tim Robbins
- Robert Clouse
- John Mackenzie
- Mark Rydell
- Allan Dwan
- Bobby Farrelly
- Paul Schrader
- Georges Franju
- Gabriel Axel
- Tay Garnett
- Lina Wertmüller
- Roger Allers
- Gene Saks
- Albert Brooks
- Chantal Akerman
- Mike Judge
- Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
- Byron Haskin
- Morton DaCosta
- Béla Tarr
- Kevin Macdonald
- Peter Collinson
- Anatole Litvak
- John Dahl
- Ken Annakin
- Oliver Hirschbiegel
- Roger Vadim
- Alejandro Jodorowsky
- Alan Crosland
- James W. Horne
- Michael Winterbottom
- Carroll Ballard
- Claire Denis
- Abel Ferrara
This page was last modified on August 4, 2010
