55 Most Famous Movie Directors around the World

55 Most Famous Movie Directors around the World

In the world of film, directors wield enormous power. They have more control over the content of the movie than any actor or screenwriter. Directors are responsible for all aspects of their films, from casting to marketing and distribution.

But more than just shaping public perception, directors also have a great deal of influence on how movies are made. This list will introduce you to some of the most famous directors in history around the world.

See 20 Best Hollywood Producers

1. Steven  Spielberg

Steven Spielberg, an American filmmaker, is one of the most famous and commercially successful directors in Hollywood. He has won three Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, and seven BAFTAs for his work as a director, producer, and screenwriter.

His notable works include Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones original trilogy, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Schindler’s List. His other projects include Saving Private Ryan, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and War of the Worlds.

Several of his films are ranked among the best movies of all time and some of the highest-grossing movies ever made. In 2003, Premiere placed him first on their list of the 100 Most Influential People in Film. He was named one of the 100 most influential persons in 2013 by Time. He is without a doubt one of the greatest filmmakers.

2. James Cameroon 

The American director James Cameroon is a significant character in the post-New Hollywood period. He is regarded as one of the industry’s most inventive directors and frequently pushes the limits of cinematic capability through the use of cutting-edge technologies.

Following his triumph with The Terminator, which he also wrote and directed, he went on to write and produce Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the action comedy True Lies. His films Titanic, Avatar, and their successors were written and directed by him, and Titanic won him Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing.

He is the second highest-grossing film director of all time and the Library of Congress has chosen two of his movies for protection in the National Film Registry.

3. Russo Brothers

The Russo brothers, also known as Anthony and Joseph Russo, are American filmmakers, producers, and screenwriters. Most of their work is jointly directed by them. Their four MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers:Endgame, are some of their best productions.

 Endgame became one of the all-time highest-grossing movies with global box office receipts of over $2.798 billion.

Arrested Development, Community, and Happy Endings are just a few of the comedies on which the siblings have served as producers and directors. The show Arrested Development received a Primetime Emmy Award.

4. Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock, an English filmmaker, was known as the ‘Master of Suspense’. He was known for his unique style of storytelling and his ability to create tension and suspense in his films. Some of his most famous works include ‘Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds. 

His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director despite five nominations.

He is generally considered to be one of the most influential figures in cinema history. He directed over 50 feature films over a six-decade career, many of which are still widely viewed and studied today. 

5. Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is an American filmmaker who is known for his unique style of filmmaking and his love for genre films. His pictures are also distinguished by stylized violence, extended dialogue, frequent profanity, and allusions to popular culture.

He has directed some of the most iconic films of the past few decades, including Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino is known for his use of non-linear storytelling and his ability to create memorable characters. 

Tarantino’s films have amassed a cult following as well as critical and financial success, and he is widely regarded as a cultural icon.

6. Francis Ford Coppola

Best known for producing the Godfather trilogy, Francis Copolla is an American movie director who is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Godfather trilogy remains Coppola’s most famous work, but he has also directed movies like Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and The Secret Garden.

In addition to two Palmes d’Or, Coppola has won a British Academy Film Award, six Golden Globe Awards, and five Academy Awards.

7. Stanely Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was a producer, scriptwriter, and director of American movies. He is regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time, and his work spans a variety of genres with inventive cinematography, dark humor, realistic attention to detail, and elaborate set designs.

Nearly all of his films are adaptations of books or short stories. His works include The Killing, Paths of Glory, the historical epic Spartacus, and the well-known The Shining. The science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey won him his first and only Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Majority of his films were nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTA Awards and underwent critical reevaluation. Although many of his films were contentious and received mixed reviews after their release, he remains one of the greatest movie directors.

8. Orson Welles

American director, actor, producer, and screenwriter Orson Welles is renowned for his groundbreaking work in theater, radio, and cinema. He is regarded as one of the best and most important directors of all time. He co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred as Charles Foster Kane in his first movie, Citizen Kane, which has repeatedly been rated as one of the best movies ever made. 

The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, and F for Fake are among the twelve other films Welles produced. (1973).

In two polls conducted by the British Film Institute in 2002, directors and critics chose him as the best filmmaker of all time. He was listed by The Daily Telegraph in 2018 as one of the 50 best Hollywood actors of all time. He was one of the greatest during his time.

9. Ridley Scott

English filmmaker Ridley Scott is also a producer. His work is renowned for its vivid and intensely focused visual style, and he is best known for helming historical dramas and science fiction movies. In 2018, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded Scott the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement, one of many honors he has earned throughout his career. He got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011 and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007.

He made his directorial debut with The Duellists before moving on to direct Alien, which helped him become more well-known. He would go on to direct Blade Runner three years later, which Scott describes as his “most complete and personal film.” Although the settings and periods of his films vary greatly, they all feature memorable images of urban settings, including 2nd-century Rome in Gladiator, 12th-century Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Heaven, medieval England in Robin Hood, ancient Memphis in Exodus: Gods and Kings, modern Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down, or futuristic cityscapes on other planets in Alien, Prometheus, The Martian, and Alien: Covenant. 

Ridley Scott is truly one of the greatest science fiction filmmakers globally.

10. Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is one of the most famous and influential movie directors in the world. He has directed many popular films such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull.

He has won numerous prestigious awards, including two Directors Guild of America Awards, an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and three Golden Globe Awards.

 In addition to the BAFTA Fellowship in 2012, he received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1997, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center homage in 1998. The Library of Congress has recognized five of his films as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and added them to the National Film Registry.

11. Christopher Nolan

Filmmaker Christopher Edward Nolan is a British-American. He attained global recognition for his second movie, memeto, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Prestige, and Inception were all critically acclaimed and financially successful for Nolan after making the switch from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia.

His movie, Inception, garnered him two Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet came after that. He received two nods for the Academy Awards for Dunkirk, including his first for Best Director.

Nolan is regarded as a preeminent director of the twenty-first century and is well known for his Hollywood blockbusters with intricate storytelling.

12. Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is a Japanese filmmaker who is known for his masterful storytelling and stunning visuals. Kurosawa’s style was bold and dynamic, inspired by Western cinema but distinct from it; he was engaged in all aspects of film production.

He has directed some of the most iconic films in Japanese cinema, including Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Yojimbo. Kurosawa’s films often explore themes of honor, duty, and morality.

Akira received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy in 1990 and is considered as one of the few individuals who made the most significant contributions to the advancement of movie industry in Asia.

Numerous retrospectives, critical analyses, biographies in print and on video, as well as publications in a variety of consumer media, have all honored his work.

See 5 Famous Movies Filmed in Tokyo

13. Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Ann Bigelow is one of the well-known female movie directors in the world. Her films, which span a variety of categories, include Detroit, Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty.

Bigelow won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and the Academy Award for Best Director for her work on The Hurt Locker, making her the first woman to do so. She was also the

first female to win the Saturn Award for Best Director with Strange Days.

In addition, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010.

See 20 Best female Film Producers

14. Spike Lee

Spike Lee is an American movie director and performer. In his writings, Lee has persistently examined racial relations, problems in the black community, the function of the media in modern society, metropolitan crime and poverty, as well as other political issues. He has numerous accolades for his films.

She’s Gotta Have It marked his feature film debut and since then, he has penned and directed several movies, including School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, 25th Hour, Inside Man, Chi-Raq, BlacKkKlansman, and Da 5 Bloods.

Lee’s films Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls and She’s Gotta Have It were each selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

15. Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican filmmaker and author. His work has been distinguished by a strong affinity for fairy tales and horror, with an attempt to infuse the grotesque with aesthetic or lyrical beauty.

Del Toro has alternated between producing Spanish-language films throughout his career, such as Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth, and English-language movies, such as Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, and Pinocchio.

He is a recipient of three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and an Emmy Award. He was also listed among the top 100 global influencers by Time magazine in 2018, and in 2019 he was awarded a motion picture plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

16. Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. A jack of all trades, The Apu Trilogy, The Music Room, The Big City, Charulata, and the Goopy–Bagha trilogy are just a few of Ray’s well-known works. 

In the course of his career, Ray won several prestigious honors, including an Academy Honorary Award in 1992, 36 Indian National Film Awards, a Golden Lion, a Golden Bear, two Silver Bears, and numerous other awards at foreign film festivals and ceremonies. He is regarded as one of the best auteurs of all time in filmmaking.

See 15 Best Bollywood Producers

17. Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most famous Russian movie directors. His films dwells on spiritual and metaphysical subjects and are renowned for their dreamlike visual imagery, obsession with nature and memory.

He directed Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker. A number of his films from this period are ranked among the best films ever made.

He received several awards for his films and three of his films, Andrei Rublev, Mirror, and Stalker, were featured in Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll of the 100 greatest films of all time.

He is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinema history.

18. Joel and Ethan Coen (The Coen Brothers)

Joel and Ethan, known as The Coen brothers, are a group of American filmmakers. Their movies cover a wide range of categories and aesthetics, which they frequently parody or subvert.

Their well-known movies include Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

 Many of their films are distinctively American, frequently examining the South and West American cultures in both contemporary and historical settings.

No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis has been ranked in the BBC’s 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000.

 In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Fargo among the 100 greatest American movies ever made. The two siblings have established a solid reputation for themselves in the film industry.

19. David Lynch

David Lynch is an American performer, director, and visual artist. Lynch, who won an honorary Academy Award in 2019, has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Director and has won the Palme d’Or and a Golden Lion at the Cannes Film Festival.

He was dubbed “the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking” by All Movie in 2007. His works include the surrealist, Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire.

20. John Martin Feeney 

American film director and former naval commander John Martin Feeney was better known by his stage name, John Ford. He won four Best Director Oscars in a row for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man.

He is also well-known for his westerns which include Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, Rio Grande, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

John Martin Feeney is recognized as one of his generation’s most significant and influential filmmakers.

21. Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini is one of the most famous Italian movie directors, script-writers and producers. He is renowned for his unique style, which combines earthiness with baroque and fantasy imagery.

His films have received high ratings in surveys conducted by reputable publications like Cahiers du Cinéma and Sight & Sound, which ranks his 1963 film 8+1/2 as the tenth best movie ever.

Fellini’s best-known films include La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8½, Juliet of the Spirits, the Toby Dammit segment of Spirits of the Dead, Fellini Satyricon, Roma, Amarcord, and Fellini’s Casanova.

He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most important directors of all time.

22. Ingmar Bergman

Regarded as one of the best and most influential filmmakers of all time, Ingmar Bergman was a playwright and filmmaker from Sweden. His films are known as “profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul.”

The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, and Fanny and Alexander are a few of his most well-known works; these four movies were chosen for the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time 2012 critics’ poll. 

23. Brian De Palma 

With a career spanning more than 50 years, Brian De Palma is an American film director and screenwriter best known for his work in the suspense, crime, and psychological thriller genres.

His films include mainstream box office hits like Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill, Scarface (1983), The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible. He also directed cult favorites like Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Blow Out, Casualties of War and Carlito’s Way.

24. Francois Truffaut

François Roland Truffaut is a French cinema director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He has been in the French cinema industry for over 25 years and is credited with helping to establish the French New Wave.

His well-known movies include Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, The Soft Skin, The Wild Child, Two English Girls, The Last Metro, and The Woman Next Door. Day for Night, which he released in 1973, won Truffaut numerous accolades, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

He is also recognized for his supporting role in the science fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg.

25. Frank Capra

One of the main award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s was directed, produced, and written by Frank Capra, an American of Italian descent. With three Best Director Oscar wins from six nominations and three additional wins from nine nominations in other categories, Capra emerged as one of America’s most significant filmmakers during the 1930s.

It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington were a few of his best movies. Capra worked as a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and made propagandist movies like the Why We Fight series during World War II.

26. Tim Burton

American animator and director Tim Burton is well-known for his dark fantasy and horror works, including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, and Corpse Bride among others.

In addition, Burton was the director of the fiction movies Alice in Wonderland and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, as well as the superhero movies such as Batman and Batman Returns and Planet of the Apes.

His accolades include nominations for two Academy Awards and three BAFTA Awards and win for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

27. Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino is a British American movie director, writer, producer, and also actress. She worked mainly in the United States during her 48-year career, appearing in 59 films and directing eight of them.

Among the most well-known films she directed include The Bigamist, which was included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Never Fear, which is loosely based on her own experiences fighting paralyzing polio, Outrage, which was one of the first films about rape, and Not Wanted, which is about an unwed pregnancy and The Trouble with Angels.

A groundbreaking example of proto-feminist filmmaking, her brief but incredibly influential directorial career tackled themes of women trapped by social conventions, typically under melodramatic or noir covers.

She is regarded as the most well-known female filmmaker who was active in the 1950s when the Hollywood studio structure was in place.

28. Woody Allen

The career of American actor, comedian, and filmmaker Woody Allen covers more than six decades. Allen has earned numerous honors, including the most Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. He has been nominated for an Emmy Award and a Tony Award and has earned four Academy Awards, nine BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award.

Allen began writing and directing movies in the middle of the 1960s, first specializing in slapstick comedies like take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death before transitioning to dramatic work in the late 1970s with Interiors, Manhattan, and Stardust Memories that was influenced by European art cinema.

29. Ang Lee

Ang Lee is a Taiwanese movie director. Lee is renowned for his emotional intensity and exploration of suppressed, hidden emotions in his films. He has won a variety of awards and garnered widespread international acclaim for his work.

Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman were among Lee’s early blockbusters.

30. Michael Mann

Michael Mann is a producer, screenwriter, and filmmaker from the United States who is best known for his distinct brand of crime drama. The movies Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, and Public Enemies are among his most well-known productions.

He is also well-known for his work as executive producer on Miami Vice, a well-liked TV show that he turned into a feature picture in 2006.

Mann was named No. 28 on Total Film’s 2007 list of the 100 greatest directors of all time, and No. 5 on Sight and Sound’s list of the 10 greatest directors of the past 25 years (For the years 1977–2002).

31. David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is a popular filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor from Canada. His films explore visceral bodily change, infectious diseases, and the fusion of the psychic, the physical, and the technological. He is a key pioneer of the subgenre known as body horror.

Although he has also made dramas, psychological thrillers, and gangster movies, Cronenberg is best known for tackling these themes in sci-fi horror movies like Shivers, Scanners, Videodrome, and The Fly.

His most recent film, Crimes of the Future, which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, was one of six chosen to vie for the Palme d’Or.

32. Pedro Almodovar

Pedro is one of the most successful Spanish movie directors. Melodrama, irreverent humor, vivid color, glitzy decor, pop culture references, and intricate plots are some of the things that distinguish his films.

His breakthrough film was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, High Heels and Live Flesh. His next two films, All About My Mother and Talk to Her, earned him an Academy Award each for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay, respectively.

His later films include Volver, Broken Embraces, The Skin I Live In, Julieta, Pain and Glory, and Parallel Mothers.

33. Sergio Leone

Sergio was an Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter generally regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. He is credited as the inventor of the spaghetti western subgenre.

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A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly are three of his movies starring Clint Eastwood. He is also known for the movies, Once Upon a Time, Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker!, and Once Upon a Time in America.

 34. Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang was an Australian filmmaker who worked in Germany and later worked in the United States of America. The innovative, futuristic Metropolis and the significant M are among Lang’s most popular works.

His other notable works after relocating to Hollywood in 1934, include Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Fury, You Only Live Once, Hangmen Also Die!, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, and The Big Heat.

He was called the “Master of Darkness” by the British Film Institute and is one of the most well-known emigrants from the German school of expressionism. He is one most important directors in the history of filmmaking.

35. Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami is an Iranian filmmaker, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and creator of motion pictures. Kiarostami began making movies in 1970 and has since worked on more than forty projects which include features and shorts.

Close-Up, The Wind Will Carry Us, and Taste of Cherry, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival were all directed by him and they all received praise from critics.

His work outside of Iran includes Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, which were shot in Italy and Japan respectively. A 2018 critics’ survey conducted by BBC Culture listed his movies, Where Is the Friend’s Home?, Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us among the top 100 foreign films.

36. William Wyler

William Wyler was a Swiss-German-American film director and producer. He was the company’s youngest director at the time, and in 1929, he oversaw the first sound production at Universal to be shot completely on location, Hell’s Heroes. For the film Dodsworth, he received his first Academy Award nod for Best Director in 1936. Other popular Wyler films include The Westerner, The Letter, Detective Story, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, The Children’s Hour, and How to Steal a Million.

He won the Academy Award for Best Director three times, those being for Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur, all of which also won Best Picture. In total, he holds a record of twelve nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director.

37. David Fincher

David Fincher is an American film director. He has received 40 nominations for his movies, the majority of which are psychological thrillers, including three for best director.

He made his feature picture debut With Alien 3 but became well-known for his work on Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for The Social Network, Mank, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He was also the director of Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

38. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is an actor and movie director from the United States. He rose to global fame with his stellar performance as the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s, Dollar Trilogy, a Western TV series Rawhide.

Some of the most famous movies he directed include the action-war movie Where Eagles Dare, the prison drama Escape from Alcatraz, the war movie Heartbreak Ridge and the action movie In the Line of Fire.

39. Bong Joon Ho

Bong Joon Ho is a South Korean cinema director, producer, and screenwriter. His filmography, which has won four Academy Awards, is distinguished by a focus on social themes, genre mixing, dark humor, and abrupt tone changes.

He made his directorial debut with the black comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite which helped him gain recognition and a cult following. His other films include the crime thriller Memories of Murder, the monster movie The Host, and the science fiction action movie Snowpiercer.

His movies including the nearly universally acclaimed black comedy thriller Parasite are all among the highest-grossing movies of all in South Korea.

40. Lois Weber

Lois Weber was an American actress, screenwriter, producer, and director who mainly worked in silent movies. She is listed as one of “the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films.

Among her best-known films are the polarizing Hypocrites (1915) and Where Are My Children? (1960). some of her work was added to the National Film Registry in 1993. Another notable achievement was her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes novel to produce the first Tarzan of the Apes movie.

41. Elia Kazan

Described by the New York Times as “one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history”, Elia Kazan was an American film and theater director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.

His films dealt with societal or psychological problems that were particularly important to him. “I don’t move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme,” says Kazan.

His notable movies were Gentleman’s Agreement, which won three Oscar awards, Pinky, which was one the first major Hollywood movies to discuss racial bias against African Americans, and the stage play version, of A Streetcar, Named Desire, which garnered twelve Oscar nominations and four wins.

 42. Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson is a producer, scriptwriter, and filmmaker from New Zealand. He is best known for his work on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works.

The highly acclaimed drama Heavenly Creatures, the comedy-horror The Frighteners, the grandiose monster reboots King Kong, and the World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, are among the other noteworthy movies.

He is the fourth-highest-grossing picture filmmaker of all time, with over $6.5 billion in total revenue from his productions.

43. Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle is an English director and producer. He is best known for his work on films including Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and its sequel T2 Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Steve Jobs, and Yesterday.

Trainspotting was rated as the tenth-best British movie of the 20th century by the British Film Institute, while Slumdog Millionaire was voted the most popular British movie of the decade.

44. Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick is one of the most famous movie directors in the United States. Some of his most popular movies include Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World, and The Tree of Life.

 The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival and gained him nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Awards.

45. Charlie Chaplin

When it comes to the silent film era, Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest. He was an English comic actor, composer, and director. His first feature-length film was The Kid, followed by A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, and The Circus.

His first sound film, The Great Dictator, which satirized Adolf Hitler, is considered one of the greatest films ever made. Charlie Chaplin is still regarded as one of the most significant figures in the film business thanks to his on-screen persona.

In 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work, he was given an Honorary Academy Award for the contribution he made towards the development of the film industry.

46. Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam is one of the most famous British movie directors. He was born in the United States and is also a performer, comic, and animator. Some of his notable works include Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, and 12 Monkeys.

In 2009, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for his lifelong accomplishments in the film industry.

47. Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski is a French and Polish actor, producer, scriptwriter, and director of motion pictures. In addition to nine César Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, the Golden Bear, and a Palme d’Or, he has also received two Golden Globe Awards.

Knife in the Water, which was produced in Poland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the United States. Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, and The Fearless Vampire Killers were his first three English-language feature-length films that he directed after spending a few years residing in France.

The Pianist, The Ghost Writer, Venus in Fur, and An Officer and a Spy are some of his other highly regarded movies.

48. David Lean

David Lean is an English filmmaker, producer, scriptwriter, and editor. He is regarded as one of the most significant personalities in British filmmaking.

Among his best-known works include Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He also produced the romantic thriller Brief Encounter and oversaw the film versions of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

The 2002 British Film Institute Sight & Sound “Directors’ Top Directors” survey, ranked  David as the ninth-best film director of all time. He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990 and was nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia.

49. Lars Von Tier

Lars Von Tier is a Danish director, performer, and songwriter. Along with fellow director Thomas Vinterberg, he founded the avant-garde film movement Dogme 95.

He also founded and is a shareholder of Zentropa Films, a Danish production company that has produced films that have sold more than 350 million tickets worldwide and won numerous awards, including two Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film.

Some of his major works include Epidemic, The Element of Crime, All About Anna, and The Kingdom and its sequel.

50. Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner is an American actor and filmmaker. Both his romantic comedy Stand by Me and the coming-of-age thriller earned him nominations for the Directors Guild of America Awards.

His Other notable works include the romantic comedy-drama The American President, the buddy comedy-drama The Bucket List, and the fantasy adventure romantic comedy The Princess Bride.

Rob Reiner was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for When Harry Met Sally and the military trial drama A Few Good Men. Additionally, he has been nominated four times for the Golden Globe for Best Director

51. Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi is one of the most successful movie directors in the United States. His well-known works include The Spider-Man trilogy and the Evil Dead series. He also directed the 1990 superhero movie Darkman, the 1995 revisionist western The Quick and the Dead, and the 1998 neo-noir crime drama A Simple Plan.

Along with movies, Raimi has also created several popular television shows, including Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In 1979, he established Renaissance Pictures, a production business and  In 2002, he created Ghost House Pictures.

His latest film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, was released on May 6, 2022, becoming the highest-grossing film of his career.

52. George Lucas

George Lucas is an American movie director, best known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Lucas rose to fame in 1977 after his epic space novel Star Wars became the highest-grossing movie at the time, earning six Academy Awards.

He also joined filmmaker Steven Spielberg in the production of the Indiana Jones movies Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

53. Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is a famous American performer, comic, and movie director. He is renowned for having written and directed several popular wide comedies and parodies throughout a career covering more than seven decades.

Brooks is one of only 18 performers to have won both a Tony Award and the EGOT. In addition to many other awards, he was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2009, was given a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010, and got the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013.

He was also given a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, the National Medal of Arts in 2016, and a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017.

His best-known films include The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

54. Milos Forman

Milos Forman was a Czech-American film director, screenwriter, and actor, who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia. He directed the anti-war musical Hair, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

For his work, Forman received numerous honors, including two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the Czech Lion, the César Award, and the David di Donatello Award.

55. Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson is an American actor and film director. He is best known for his action hero roles, particularly his breakout role as Max Rockatansky in the first three films of the post-apocalyptic action series Mad Max and as Martin Riggs in the buddy cop action-comedy film series Lethal Weapon.

He rose to global fame in 1995 after he produced, directed, and starred in Braveheart, a historical epic, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the Academy Award for Best Director, and the Academy Award for Best Picture.

His other famous works include The Passion of the Christ,  Apocalypto, Edge of Darkness, and Hacksaw Ridge  which won two Academy Awards and was nominated for another four including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson, his second nomination in the category

Conclusion

Although this list does not exhaustively include all the famous movie directors around the world,  it introduces you to some the best  men and women who have made their name in the field of filmmaking.