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Top 525 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.

  1. Alfred Hitchcock
  2. Steven Spielberg
  3. Stanley Kubrick
  4. Martin Scorsese
  5. Billy Wilder
  6. Francis Ford Coppola
  7. John Ford
  8. Akira Kurosawa
  9. Howard Hawks
  10. Ridley Scott
  11. Charles Chaplin
  12. Woody Allen
  13. Ingmar Bergman
  14. Quentin Tarantino
  15. James Cameron
  16. Orson Welles
  17. Fritz Lang
  18. Peter Jackson
  19. David Lean
  20. Roman Polanski
  21. Christopher Nolan
  22. John Huston
  23. Sergio Leone
  24. Joel Coen
  25. Frank Capra
  26. David Lynch
  27. Federico Fellini
  28. Rob Reiner
  29. Michael Curtiz
  30. Luis Buñuel
  31. Jean-Luc Godard
  32. Clint Eastwood
  33. William Wyler
  34. Robert Zemeckis
  35. Victor Fleming
  36. Hayao Miyazaki
  37. Sidney Lumet
  38. Robert Altman
  39. François Truffaut
  40. David Fincher
  41. George Cukor
  42. George Lucas
  43. John Carpenter
  44. Andrei Tarkovsky
  45. Tim Burton
  46. Jean Renoir
  47. Elia Kazan
  48. Robert Wise
  49. F. W. Murnau
  50. David Cronenberg
  51. Brian De Palma
  52. Milos Forman
  53. Ernst Lubitsch
  54. Ang Lee
  55. Sam Peckinpah
  56. Richard Linklater
  57. Terry Gilliam
  58. Yasujiro Ozu
  59. Jonathan Demme
  60. Werner Herzog
  61. Mike Nichols
  62. William Friedkin
  63. Paul Thomas Anderson
  64. Carol Reed
  65. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  66. Krzysztof Kieslowski
  67. Vincente Minnelli
  68. Michelangelo Antonioni
  69. Michael Powell
  70. Spike Lee
  71. Leo McCarey
  72. Nicholas Ray
  73. Fred Zinnemann
  74. Robert Bresson
  75. Vittorio De Sica
  76. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  77. Preston Sturges
  78. Peter Weir
  79. James Whale
  80. John Lasseter
  81. Terrence Malick
  82. Stanley Donen
  83. Satyajit Ray
  84. John Landis
  85. Mel Brooks
  86. Oliver Stone
  87. Michael Mann
  88. Wes Anderson
  89. Paul Verhoeven
  90. Kar-Wai Wong
  91. Danny Boyle
  92. Sam Raimi
  93. John McTiernan
  94. Andrew Stanton
  95. Alfonso Cuarón
  96. Sergei M. Eisenstein
  97. Don Siegel
  98. George Roy Hill
  99. Robert Aldrich
  100. Richard Donner
  101. Frank Darabont
  102. Pedro Almodóvar
  103. Wim Wenders
  104. George A. Romero
  105. Brad Bird
  106. George Stevens
  107. Buster Keaton
  108. Luchino Visconti
  109. Kenji Mizoguchi
  110. Alain Resnais
  111. Arthur Penn
  112. Bryan Singer
  113. John Cassavetes
  114. Bernardo Bertolucci
  115. John Sturges
  116. Darren Aronofsky
  117. Otto Preminger
  118. Lars von Trier
  119. Irvin Kershner
  120. D. W. Griffith
  121. Nicolas Roeg
  122. Franklin J. Schaffner
  123. Harold Ramis
  124. David Hand
  125. Steven Soderbergh
  126. Jean-Pierre Melville
  127. Roberto Rossellini
  128. Jacques Tourneur
  129. Pete Docter
  130. George Miller
  131. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  132. John Frankenheimer
  133. Henri-Georges Clouzot
  134. Guillermo del Toro
  135. Emeric Pressburger
  136. Raoul Walsh
  137. Jim Jarmusch
  138. John Hughes
  139. Ron Howard
  140. Hal Ashby
  141. Blake Edwards
  142. Gus Van Sant
  143. Sydney Pollack
  144. Michael Haneke
  145. Norman Jewison
  146. Samuel Fuller
  147. Alexander Mackendrick
  148. Jean-Pierre Jeunet
  149. Terry Jones
  150. John Woo
  151. Mike Leigh
  152. Michael Apted
  153. John Schlesinger
  154. Louis Malle
  155. John G. Avildsen
  156. Jacques Tati
  157. Charles Laughton
  158. Michael Cimino
  159. Sam Mendes
  160. Max Ophüls
  161. Anthony Mann
  162. Abbas Kiarostami
  163. Cameron Crowe
  164. Michel Gondry
  165. Kathryn Bigelow
  166. Gene Kelly
  167. Alan J. Pakula
  168. Wes Craven
  169. William A. Wellman
  170. Edgar Wright
  171. Barry Levinson
  172. Josef von Sternberg
  173. John Boorman
  174. Luc Besson
  175. Bob Fosse
  176. King Vidor
  177. Robert Mulligan
  178. Tod Browning
  179. Wolfgang Petersen
  180. Sofia Coppola
  181. Chan-wook Park
  182. Yimou Zhang
  183. Peter Bogdanovich
  184. Spike Jonze
  185. Marcel Carné
  186. Richard Lester
  187. Mel Gibson
  188. Stephen Frears
  189. Paul Greengrass
  190. Chris Columbus
  191. Tobe Hooper
  192. Curtis Hanson
  193. Jean Cocteau
  194. Sam Wood
  195. Fernando Meirelles
  196. Mervyn LeRoy
  197. Tony Scott
  198. (tie) Lana Wachowski and
    Lilly Wachowski
  1. M. Night Shyamalan
  2. Lewis Milestone
  3. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
  4. Agnès Varda
  5. Philip Kaufman
  6. Dario Argento
  7. Pier Paolo Pasolini
  8. Chris Marker
  9. Ivan Reitman
  10. David Yates
  11. Gore Verbinski
  12. Douglas Sirk
  13. Henry Selick
  14. Robert Stevenson
  15. Errol Morris
  16. Alan Parker
  17. Jules Dassin
  18. Amy Heckerling
  19. Alexander Payne
  20. Jean Vigo
  21. Jane Campion
  22. Mike Newell
  23. Jacques Demy
  24. Gillo Pontecorvo
  25. Robert Wiene
  26. Todd Haynes
  27. Rouben Mamoulian
  28. Eric Rohmer
  29. Leni Riefenstahl
  30. Lee Unkrich
  31. Baz Luhrmann
  32. Kevin Smith
  33. Masaki Kobayashi
  34. Robert Rossen
  35. Dennis Hopper
  36. Dziga Vertov
  37. Penny Marshall
  38. Andrzej Wajda
  39. Robert Hamer
  40. Henry King
  41. Guy Hamilton
  42. Giuseppe Tornatore
  43. John Waters
  44. Cecil B. DeMille
  45. John Sayles
  46. Guy Ritchie
  47. Ernest B. Schoedsack
  48. Martin Ritt
  49. Peter Yates
  50. Richard Fleischer
  51. Michael Moore
  52. Richard Kelly
  53. Georges Méliès
  54. Erich von Stroheim
  55. Hamilton Luske
  56. Robert Rodriguez
  57. Walter Hill
  58. Isao Takahata
  59. J.J. Abrams
  60. Ken Loach
  61. Mark Sandrich
  62. Trey Parker
  63. Wolfgang Reitherman
  64. Stanley Kramer
  65. Ron Shelton
  66. Katsuhiro Ôtomo
  67. Jon Favreau
  68. Richard Marquand
  69. David O. Russell
  70. David Zucker
  71. James Mangold
  72. Zack Snyder
  73. Jacques Rivette
  74. Edward Yang
  75. Clyde Bruckman
  76. Merian C. Cooper
  77. James Ivory
  78. Joss Whedon
  79. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
  80. James L. Brooks
  81. Victor Erice
  82. Kevin Costner
  83. Doug Liman
  84. Chantal Akerman
  85. Claire Denis
  86. Edward Zwick
  87. Richard Brooks
  88. Martin Brest
  89. Stuart Rosenberg
  90. Adrian Lyne
  91. Steve James
  92. Terry Zwigoff
  93. Anthony Minghella
  94. Henry Hathaway
  95. Lindsay Anderson
  96. Terence Young
  97. Lasse Hallström
  98. Ben Sharpsteen
  99. Richard Attenborough
  100. Claude Lanzmann
  101. Michael Bay
  102. Charles Crichton
  103. Hsiao-hsien Hou
  104. Béla Tarr
  105. Elem Klimov
  106. Ethan Coen
  107. Roberto Benigni
  108. Robin Hardy
  109. Takashi Miike
  110. Bong Joon Ho
  111. Robert J. Flaherty
  112. Robert Siodmak
  113. Adam McKay
  114. Lawrence Kasdan
  115. Martin Campbell
  116. Mike Hodges
  117. Ousmane Sembene
  118. Neil Jordan
  119. Denis Villeneuve
  120. Peter Farrelly
  121. Tony Richardson
  122. Nicholas Meyer
  123. Ken Russell
  124. Nagisa Ôshima
  125. Stan Brakhage
  126. Charles Burnett
  127. Jerry Zucker
  128. Steve McQueen
  129. Clyde Geronimi
  130. Bob Rafelson
  131. Alejandro Amenábar
  132. Jack Clayton
  133. Georges Franju
  134. Victor Sjöström
  135. Thomas Vinterberg
  136. Carl Reiner
  137. Mamoru Oshii
  138. Bruce Robinson
  139. René Clair
  140. Jay Roach
  141. Joseph Losey
  142. Fred M. Wilcox
  143. Lloyd Bacon
  144. Frederick Wiseman
  145. Damien Chazelle
  146. Georg Wilhelm Pabst
  147. W.S. Van Dyke
  148. Frank Oz
  149. Randal Kleiser
  150. Claude Chabrol
  151. Jason Reitman
  152. Jack Arnold
  153. Alejandro Jodorowsky
  154. Abel Ferrara
  155. Satoshi Kon
  156. Takeshi Kitano
  157. Tomas Alfredson
  158. Garry Marshall
  159. Phil Alden Robinson
  160. Herbert Ross
  161. Mario Bava
  162. Rob Minkoff
  163. Clarence Brown
  164. Roland Emmerich
  165. Bob Clark
  166. Matthew Vaughn
  167. Joseph H. Lewis
  168. William Dieterle
  169. Alex Proyas
  170. Norman Z. McLeod
  171. Michael Ritchie
  172. Jerome Robbins
  173. Terence Fisher
  174. Roger Corman
  175. Tom Hooper
  176. Nick Park
  177. Joel Schumacher
  178. John Badham
  179. J. Lee Thompson
  180. Judd Apatow
  181. Bill Forsyth
  182. Christopher Guest
  183. Peter Greenaway
  184. Ted Kotcheff
  185. Nora Ephron
  186. Oliver Hirschbiegel
  187. Jan de Bont
  188. Jim Sharman
  189. (tie) Ron Clements and
    John Musker
  1. Tony Kaye
  2. Barry Sonnenfeld
  3. Mike Judge
  4. George Sidney
  5. Mikheil Kalatozishvili
  6. Edgar G. Ulmer
  7. Emir Kusturica
  8. William Keighley
  9. Ari Folman
  10. Costa-Gavras
  11. Jacques Audiard
  12. Taylor Hackford
  13. Alex Cox
  14. Andrew Adamson
  15. Abel Gance
  16. (tie) Gary Trousdale and
    Kirk Wise
  1. Joe Dante
  2. Roger Allers
  3. Joe Wright
  4. David Anspaugh
  5. Mel Stuart
  6. Theodoros Angelopoulos
  7. Rian Johnson
  8. Andrew Davis
  9. Jim Sheridan
  10. Edward Dmytryk
  11. George Seaton
  12. Ben Stiller
  13. Sylvester Stallone
  14. Michael Winterbottom
  15. Jonathan Glazer
  16. Emile Ardolino
  17. Dean DeBlois
  18. Larry Charles
  19. Robert Benton
  20. Martin McDonagh
  21. Gary Ross
  22. Rob Marshall
  23. Henry Koster
  24. Todd Phillips
  25. Arthur Hiller
  26. Ishirô Honda
  27. Nicolas Winding Refn
  28. Tom Tykwer
  29. Kenneth Branagh
  30. Shane Meadows
  31. Hugh Hudson
  32. John Madden
  33. Budd Boetticher
  34. Joe Johnston
  35. George Marshall
  36. Stephen Daldry
  37. Charles Walters
  38. Terence Davies
  39. Edmund Goulding
  40. Monte Hellman
  41. Claude Berri
  42. Peter Watkins
  43. Sylvain Chomet
  44. Patricio Guzmán
  45. Michael Anderson
  46. Chris Noonan
  47. James Gunn
  48. Richard Curtis
  49. Don Bluth
  50. Kaige Chen
  51. Laurence Olivier
  52. Robert Clouse
  53. Paul Schrader
  54. Jacques Becker
  55. James Marsh
  56. Mathieu Kassovitz
  57. Hiroshi Teshigahara
  58. Walter Lang
  59. Robert Redford
  60. Phillip Noyce
  61. Kevin Macdonald
  62. Aleksandr Sokurov
  63. Neill Blomkamp
  64. Walter Salles
  65. Kinji Fukasaku
  66. Jirí Menzel
  67. Chuck Jones
  68. Byron Haskin
  69. Hirokazu Koreeda
  70. Atom Egoyan
  71. Charles Vidor
  72. Cy Endfield
  73. D.A. Pennebaker
  74. Kenneth Anger
  75. Barbara Kopple
  76. Marcel Ophüls
  77. Gregory La Cava
  78. Andrew Dominik
  79. Lukas Moodysson
  80. Godfrey Reggio
  81. Gavin O'Connor
  82. Mark Waters
  83. Wilfred Jackson
  84. René Clément
  85. Andrew Niccol
  86. James Wan
  87. Edwin S. Porter
  88. Maurice Pialat
  89. Asghar Farhadi
  90. Edward F. Cline
  91. Jim Abrahams
  92. John Cameron Mitchell
  93. Glauber Rocha
  94. F. Gary Gray
  95. Kon Ichikawa
  96. Warren Beatty
  97. John Dahl
  98. Duncan Jones
  99. Greg Mottola
  100. Roland Joffé
  101. Gaspar Noé
  102. Leon Gast
  103. Joseph Sargent
  104. Lewis Gilbert
  105. Aleksandr Dovzhenko
  106. Irving Rapper
  107. Bruce Beresford
  108. Tom McCarthy
  109. Mark Robson
  110. Julian Schnabel
  111. Louis Feuillade
  112. John Singleton
  113. Aki Kaurismäki
  114. John Mackenzie
  115. Ralph Bakshi
  116. Todd Solondz
  117. Michael Lehmann
  118. William Cameron Menzies
  119. Delmer Daves
This page was last modified on March 15, 2020