Top 500 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
- Akira Kurosawa
- Ridley Scott
- Frank Capra
- Orson Welles
- Woody Allen
- James Cameron
- Victor Fleming
- Michael Curtiz
- Charles Chaplin
- George Cukor
- Ingmar Bergman
- William Wyler
- Quentin Tarantino
- Roman Polanski
- Fritz Lang
- Robert Altman
- Peter Jackson
- Joel Coen
- Federico Fellini
- Rob Reiner
- George Lucas
- Elia Kazan
- Luis Buñuel
- Robert Zemeckis
- Jean Renoir
- Robert Wise
- David Lynch
- François Truffaut
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Sidney Lumet
- Sergio Leone
- Milos Forman
- Preston Sturges
- Fred Zinnemann
- Mike Nichols
- Clint Eastwood
- Vincente Minnelli
- George Stevens
- Carol Reed
- Ernst Lubitsch
- F. W. Murnau
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Jonathan Demme
- Terry Gilliam
- David Fincher
- Stanley Donen
- Brian De Palma
- Leo McCarey
- John Carpenter
- Sam Peckinpah
- Oliver Stone
- James Whale
- Peter Weir
- William Friedkin
- Tim Burton
- Krzysztof Kieslowski
- Vittorio De Sica
- D. W. Griffith
- Sergei M. Eisenstein
- John Lasseter
- Mel Brooks
- Ang Lee
- Nicholas Ray
- Satyajit Ray
- David Cronenberg
- George Roy Hill
- Michael Powell
- Arthur Penn
- Spike Lee
- Michelangelo Antonioni
- Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Michael Mann
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- George A. Romero
- Christopher Nolan
- Robert Bresson
- John Landis
- Bryan Singer
- Frank Darabont
- Sam Raimi
- John Frankenheimer
- Werner Herzog
- Danny Boyle
- Don Siegel
- John Sturges
- Yasujiro Ozu
- Norman Jewison
- John McTiernan
- David Hand
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Steven Soderbergh
- John Schlesinger
- Terrence Malick
- Blake Edwards
- Sydney Pollack
- Irvin Kershner
- Paul Verhoeven
- Wim Wenders
- Buster Keaton
- Nicolas Roeg
- King Vidor
- Alexander Mackendrick
- Richard Linklater
- Gene Kelly
- Otto Preminger
- Barry Levinson
- Louis Malle
- Alain Resnais
- Jacques Tourneur
- Sam Wood
- Max Ophüls
- Robert Mulligan
- Harold Ramis
- Robert Aldrich
- William A. Wellman
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Hal Ashby
- Luchino Visconti
- Richard Donner
- Roberto Rossellini
- Raoul Walsh
- Richard Lester
- John Boorman
- Josef von Sternberg
- John Hughes
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Terry Jones
- John G. Avildsen
- Curtis Hanson
- Pedro Almodóvar
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Wes Craven
- Stephen Frears
- John Cassavetes
- Bob Fosse
- Michael Cimino
- Cameron Crowe
- Mike Leigh
- Charles Laughton
- Lewis Milestone
- Alan J. Pakula
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Baz Luhrmann
- Emeric Pressburger
- Marcel Carné
- Jacques Tati
- Ron Howard
- Jean Cocteau
- Mervyn LeRoy
- John Sayles
- Kar Wai Wong
- Sam Mendes
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet
- Yimou Zhang
- John Woo
- Mel Gibson
- Luc Besson
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Gus Van Sant
- Wes Anderson
- Robert Rossen
- Mark Sandrich
- Tony Scott
- Douglas Sirk
- Samuel Fuller
- James L. Brooks
- Robert Stevenson
- Tod Browning
- Mike Newell
- Jean Vigo
- Alan Parker
- Rouben Mamoulian
- Abbas Kiarostami
- Martin Ritt
- Lars von Trier
- George Miller
- Jim Jarmusch
- Anthony Minghella
- Erich von Stroheim
- Richard Attenborough
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Peter Bogdanovich
- M. Night Shyamalan
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Tobe Hooper
- (tie) Andy Wachowski and
Larry Wachowski
- Philip Kaufman
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Jane Campion
- Brad Bird
- Stanley Kramer
- James Ivory
- Guy Hamilton
- Anthony Mann
- Robert Hamer
- Dennis Hopper
- Eric Rohmer
- Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Tony Richardson
- Henry King
- Adrian Lyne
- Peter Yates
- Charles Crichton
- Michel Gondry
- Richard Marquand
- Richard Fleischer
- John Waters
- Garry Marshall
- Amy Heckerling
- Randal Kleiser
- Ivan Reitman
- Clyde Bruckman
- Kevin Smith
- Darren Aronofsky
- Alexander Payne
- Guillermo del Toro
- Michael Apted
- Ron Shelton
- Claude Berri
- Chris Columbus
- Bruce Robinson
- Neil Jordan
- Gore Verbinski
- Lloyd Bacon
- Norman Z. McLeod
- Giuseppe Tornatore
- Merian C. Cooper
- Jay Roach
- Sofia Coppola
- Errol Morris
- Laurence Olivier
- Bob Rafelson
- Ken Loach
- Terence Young
- Andrzej Wajda
- Kevin Costner
- Gillo Pontecorvo
- Fernando Meirelles
- Jules Dassin
- Dario Argento
- Bill Forsyth
- Todd Haynes
- Clarence Brown
- Jacques Demy
- Jerry Zucker
- Andrew Stanton
- Abel Gance
- Spike Jonze
- Hamilton Luske
- Edward Zwick
- W. S. Van Dyke
- Herbert Ross
- Lindsay Anderson
- René Clair
- Richard Kelly
- Leni Riefenstahl
- John Madden
- Robert Wiene
- Robin Hardy
- Robert J. Flaherty
- Phil Alden Robinson
- Mike Hodges
- Lasse Hallström
- Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Henry Hathaway
- Michael Ritchie
- Penny Marshall
- Ben Sharpsteen
- Robert Redford
- Robert Rodriguez
- Roberto Benigni
- Lawrence Kasdan
- John Badham
- Walter Lang
- David Zucker
- William Keighley
- Wolfgang Reitherman
- Bruce Beresford
- George Sidney
- Paul Greengrass
- Robert Benton
- Atom Egoyan
- Arthur Hiller
- Terry Zwigoff
- Barry Sonnenfeld
- Robert Siodmak
- Ken Russell
- Michael Moore
- Jerome Robbins
- Edgar Wright
- William Dieterle
- Phillip Noyce
- Richard Brooks
- Dziga Vertov
- Chris Marker
- Edward F. Cline
- Michael Bay
- Gregory La Cava
- Jacques Rivette
- Jack Clayton
- Walter Hill
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Fred M. Wilcox
- Trey Parker
- Warren Beatty
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Henry Selick
- Claude Chabrol
- Jan de Bont
- Jim Sharman
- Steve James
- Roland Emmerich
- Joseph Losey
- Nick Park
- Katsuhiro Ôtomo
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Mark Robson
- Nagisa Oshima
- Henry Koster
- J. Lee Thompson
- Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- David O. Russell
- Hugh Hudson
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Taylor Hackford
- Martin Brest
- Michael Haneke
- Emile Ardolino
- Jack Arnold
- Carl Reiner
- Lewis Gilbert
- Costa-Gavras
- George Seaton
- Victor Sjöström
- Irving Rapper
- Mel Stuart
- Andrew Davis
- Fred Schepisi
- Peter Greenaway
- Doug Liman
- Nicholas Meyer
- Joel Schumacher
- Charles Walters
- Agnès Varda
- Edmund Goulding
- Kenneth Branagh
- Takeshi Kitano
- Chris Noonan
- Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Alejandro Amenábar
- Edward Dmytryk
- Pete Docter
- Delbert Mann
- Peter Farrelly
- Jim Sheridan
- Bob Clark
- Terence Fisher
- Peter Cattaneo
- Frank Lloyd
- Alex Cox
- Alejandro González Iñárritu
- Edward Yang
- Martin Campbell
- Victor Erice
- Tom Tykwer
- Edgar G. Ulmer
- Kaige Chen
- Roland Joffé
- Charles Vidor
- Terence Davies
- Stephen Daldry
- Joe Dante
- Cy Endfield
- Guy Ritchie
- Christopher Guest
- Rob Minkoff
- Ronald Neame
- Karl Reisz
- Bertrand Tavernier
- Alex Proyas
- Nora Ephron
- David Anspaugh
- Elem Klimov
- Clyde Geronimi
- Aleksandr Dovzhenko
- René Clément
- Claude Lanzmann
- Ousmane Sembene
- Gillian Armstrong
- Walter Salles
- Roger Corman
- Andrew Adamson
- Joshua Logan
- Paul Mazursky
- Mira Nair
- Michael Anderson
- David Butler
- Georges Méliès
- Russ Meyer
- Kon Ichikawa
- David Mamet
- Marcel Ophüls
- John Mackenzie
- Ted Kotcheff
- Franco Zeffirelli
- Volker Schlöndorff
- (tie) Gary Trousdale and
Kirk Wise
- Oliver Hirschbiegel
- George Marshall
- John Singleton
- Sidney J. Furie
- Charles Burnett
- Todd Solondz
- Michael Winterbottom
- Robert Z. Leonard
- John Boulting
- Wayne Wang
- James Mangold
- Robert Clouse
- Emir Kusturica
- Jim Abrahams
- Jerry Lewis
- Paul Schrader
- Tim Robbins
- Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
- Louis Feuillade
- D.A. Pennebaker
- Frank Oz
- Christian Nyby
- Albert Brooks
- Kevin Macdonald
- James Foley
- Roger Vadim
- P.J. Hogan
- Wilfred Jackson
- Paul Weitz
- Abel Ferrara
- Leon Gast
- Joe Johnston
- Theodoros Angelopoulos
- Jirí Menzel
- Bobby Farrelly
- John Dahl
- Mike Figgis
- Shôhei Imamura
- Chantal Akerman
- Morton DaCosta
- Byron Haskin
- Anatole Litvak
- Peter Collinson
- Georges Franju
- Mike Judge
- Frank Borzage
- Allan Dwan
- Gabriel Axel
- Alejandro Jodorowsky
- Sam Taylor
- Béla Tarr
- Claire Denis
- Gene Saks
- Tay Garnett
- Budd Boetticher
- Chan-wook Park
- Busby Berkeley
- Mario Bava
- Ken Annakin
- Marcel Pagnol
- Rob Marshall
- James W. Horne
- Monte Hellman
- Michael Lehmann
- Alan Crosland
- Lina Wertmüller
- Frederick Wiseman
- Mamoru Oshii
- Roger Allers
- Ben Stiller
- Rupert Julian
- Mikheil Kalatozishvili
- Mitchell Leisen
- George Armitage
- Don Chaffey
- István Szabó
- Mark Rydell
- Denys Arcand
- Carroll Ballard
This page was last modified on April 17, 2011
