Notable Filmmakers
This list is comprised of some of the most recognizable names from the world of film and television production. Included are directors, producers and screenwriters. Not included are the cast, who are instead listed with the famous actors and actresses.
| Name | Lifespan | Other Names | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georges Méliès | 1861-1938 |  | |
| Konstantin Stanislavski | 1863-1938 | | |
| Hardee Kirkland | 1868-1929 | | |
| Rupert Hughes | 1872-1956 | | |
| William Desmond Taylor | 1872-1922 | (Deane, Tanner) | |
| Adolph Zukor | 1873-1976 | (Zuckery) | |
| Fred Niblo | 1874-1948 | (Liedtke) | |
| D. W. Griffith | 1875-1948 | | |
| James Young Deer | 1876-1946 | (Johnson) | |
| Rupert Julian | 1879-1943 | (Hayes) | |
| King Baggot | 1879-1948 | | |
| Mack Sennett | 1880-1960 | (Sinnott) | |
| Cecil B. DeMille | 1881-1959 | | |
| Samuel Goldwyn | 1882-1974 | (Gelbfisz) | |
| Max Linder | 1883-1925 | (Leuvielle) | |
| Louis B. Mayer | 1884-1957 | (Meir) | |
| Erich von Stroheim | 1885-1957 | (Stroheim) | |
| John M. Stahl | 1886-1950 | (Strelitsky) | |
| Henry King | 1886-1982 | | |
| Frank Lloyd | 1886-1960 | | |
| Michael Curtiz | 1886-1962 | | |
| F. W. Murnau | 1888-1931 | | |
| Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1889-1968 | | |
| Victor Fleming | 1889-1949 | | |
| Charlie Chaplin | 1889-1977 | | |
| Fritz Lang | 1890-1976 | | |
| Warwick Ward | 1891-1967 | | |
| Hal Roach | 1892-1992 | | |
| Ernst Lubitsch | 1892-1947 | | |
| Ernst Marischka | 1893-1963 | | |
| Rex Ingram | 1893-1950 | (Hitchcock) | |
| Florián Rey | 1894-1962 | (Martínez, del Castillo) | |
| John Ford | 1894-1973 | | |
| King Vidor | 1894-1982 | | |
| Frank Borzage | 1894-1962 | | |
| Jean Renoir | 1894-1979 | | |
| Gustav von Wangenheim | 1895-1975 | | |
| Lewis Milestone | 1895-1980 | | |
| Dziga Vertov | 1896-1954 | (Kaufman) | |
| Howard Hawks | 1896-1977 | | |
| Douglas Sirk | 1897-1987 | (Sierck) | |
| Frank Capra | 1897-1991 | | |
| Sergei Eisenstein | 1898-1948 | | |
| Kenji Mizoguchi | 1898-1956 | | |
| Preston Sturges | 1898-1959 | (Biden) | |
| Leo McCarey | 1898-1969 | | |
| René Clair | 1898-1981 | | |
| Monte Collins | 1898-1951 | | |
| Irving Thalberg | 1899-1936 | | |
| Norman Taurog | 1899-1981 | | |
| George Cukor | 1899-1983 | | |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 1899-1980 | | |
| Luis Buñuel | 1900-1983 | (Portolés) | |
| James Hilton | 1900-1954 | | |
| Vittorio De Sica | 1901-1974 | | |
| Robert Bresson | 1901-1999 | | |
| Walt Disney | 1901-1966 | | |
| David O. Selznick | 1902-1965 | | |
| William Wyler | 1902-1981 | | |
| Leni Riefenstahl | 1902-2003 | | |
| Darryl F. Zanuck | 1902-1979 | | |
| Max Nosseck | 1902-1972 | | |
| Vincente Minnelli | 1903-1986 | | |
| Yasujirō Ozu | 1903-1963 | | |
| George Stevens | 1904-1975 | | |
| Otto Preminger | 1905-1986 | | |
| Dalton Trumbo | 1905-1976 | | |
| Roberto Rossellini | 1906-1977 | | |
| Billy Wilder | 1906-2002 | | |
| John Huston | 1906-1987 | | |
| Luchino Visconti | 1906-1976 | | |
| Carol Reed | 1906-1976 | | |
| Fred Zinnemann | 1907-1997 | | |
| Jacques Tati | 1907-1982 | | |
| Filopimin Finos | 1908-1977 | | |
| Paul Henreid | 1908-1992 | (von Hernreid) | |
| Tex Avery | 1908-1980 | | |
| David Lean | 1908-1991 | | |
| Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 1909-1993 | | |
| Elia Kazan | 1909-2003 | | |
| Elmar Klos | 1910-1993 | | |
| Akira Kurosawa | 1910-1998 | | |
| William Hanna | 1910-2001 | | |
| Joseph Barbera | 1911-2006 | | |
| Val Guest | 1911-2006 | (Grossmann) | |
| Chuck Jones | 1912-2002 | | |
| Michelangelo Antonioni | 1912-2007 | | |
| Don Siegel | 1912-1991 | | |
| Carlo Ponti | 1912-2007 | | |
| Obrad Gluščević | 1913-1980 | | |
| Fatin Abdel Wahab | 1913-1972 | | |
| Nedrick Young | 1914-1968 | (Douglas) | |
| Robert Wise | 1914-2005 | | |
| Norman Lloyd | 1914-2021 | (Perlmutter) | |
| Orson Welles | 1915-1985 | | |
| Ömer Lütfi Akad | 1916-2011 | | |
| Jean-Pierre Melville | 1917-1973 | | |
| Ida Lupino | 1918-1995 | | |
| Ingmar Bergman | 1918-2007 | | |
| Robert Aldrich | 1918-1983 | | |
| Jerome Robbins | 1918-1998 | | |
| Dino De Laurentiis | 1919-2010 | | |
| Federico Fellini | 1920-1993 | | |
| Delbert Mann | 1920-2007 | | |
| Lewis Gilbert | 1920-2018 | | |
| Éric Rohmer | 1920-2010 | | |
| Gene Nelson | 1920-1996 | (Berg) | |
| Franklin J. Schaffner | 1920-1989 | | |
| Richard Quine | 1920-1989 | | |
| Daniel Petrie | 1920-2004 | | |
| Don Taylor | 1920-1998 | | |
| Satyajit Ray | 1921-1992 | | |
| Gene Roddenberry | 1921-1991 | | |
| George Roy Hill | 1921-2002 | | |
| Pier Paolo Pasolini | 1922-1975 | | |
| Carl Reiner | 1922-2020 | | |
| Carlo Lizzani | 1922-2013 | | |
| Fadil Hadžić | 1922-2011 | | |
| Krešo Golik | 1922-1996 | | |
| Alain Resnais | 1922-2014 | | |
| Blake Edwards | 1922-2010 | | |
| Norman Lear | 1922-2023 | | |
| Franco Zeffirelli | 1923-2019 | | |
| Gene Reynolds | 1923-2020 | (Blumenthal) | |
| Vatroslav Mimica | 1923-2020 | | |
| Richard Attenborough | 1923-2014 | | |
| Dev Anand | 1923-2011 | | |
| Sergei Parajanov | 1924-1990 | | |
| František Vláčil | 1924-1999 | | |
| Sidney Lumet | 1924-2011 | | |
| Ed Wood | 1924-1978 | | |
| Robert Altman | 1925-2006 | | |
| Peter Brook | 1925-2022 | | |
| Mai Zetterling | 1925-1994 | | |
| John Schlesinger | 1926-2003 | | |
| Andrzej Wajda | 1926-2016 | | |
| Mel Brooks | 1926- | (Kaminsky) | |
| Norman Jewison | 1926-2024 | | |
| Bryan Forbes | 1926-2013 | (Clarke) | |
| John Derek | 1926-1998 | (Harris) | |
| Ruth Prawer Jhabvala | 1927-2013 | | |
| Lucio Fulci | 1927-1996 | | |
| Bob Fosse | 1927-1987 | | |
| Neil Simon | 1927-2018 | | |
| William Peter Blatty | 1928-2017 | | |
| Roger Vadim | 1928-2000 | | |
| Veljko Bulajić | 1928- | | |
| Agnès Varda | 1928-2019 | | |
| Tony Richardson | 1928-1991 | | |
| Stanley Kubrick | 1928-1999 | | |
| Nicolas Roeg | 1928-2018 | | |
| Sergio Leone | 1929-1989 | | |
| Věra Chytilová | 1929-2014 | | |
| Alejandro Jodorowsky | 1929- | | |
| Digby Wolfe | 1929-2012 | | |
| Monte Hellman | 1929-2021 | (Himmelbaum) | |
| John Cassavetes | 1929-1989 | | |
| Richard Donner | 1930-2021 | | |
| Clint Eastwood | 1930- | | |
| Claude Chabrol | 1930-2010 | | |
| Jean-Luc Godard | 1930-2022 | | |
| Buck Henry | 1930-2020 | (Zuckerman) | |
| Ted Kotcheff | 1931- | | |
| Antun Vrdoljak | 1931- | | |
| Moshé Mizrahi | 1931-2018 | | |
| Mike Nichols | 1931-2014 | (Peschkowsky) | |
| Carlos Saura | 1932-2023 | | |
| Alfonso Arau | 1932- | (Incháustegui) | |
| François Truffaut | 1932-1984 | | |
| Miloš Forman | 1932-2018 | | |
| Andrei Tarkovsky | 1932-1986 | | |
| Elaine May | 1932- | (Berlin) | |
| Branko Lustig | 1932-2019 | | |
| Robert Benton | 1932- | | |
| John Boorman | 1933- | | |
| Jack Hill | 1933- | | |
| Costa-Gavras | 1933- | | |
| Sidney J. Furie | 1933- | | |
| Tinto Brass | 1933- | | |
| Ivan Passer | 1933-2020 | | |
| Roman Polanski | 1933- | | |
| Krsto Papić | 1933-2013 | | |
| Sydney Pollack | 1934-2008 | | |
| Garry Marshall | 1934-2016 | | |
| Robert Towne | 1934-2024 | (Schwartz) | |
| Theo Angelopoulos | 1935-2012 | | |
| William Friedkin | 1935-2023 | | |
| Isao Takahata | 1935-2018 | | |
| Woody Allen | 1935- | (Konigsberg) | |
| John G. Avildsen | 1935-2017 | | |
| Med Hondo | 1936-2019 | | |
| Ken Loach | 1936- | | |
| Robert Redford | 1936- | | |
| Jim Henson | 1936-1990 | | |
| Ismail Merchant | 1936-2005 | (Rahman) | |
| David Seidler | 1937- | | |
| Warren Beatty | 1937- | | |
| Don Bluth | 1937- | | |
| Jerry Weintraub | 1937-2015 | | |
| Ridley Scott | 1937- | | |
| Tahir Hussain | c. 1938-2010 | | |
| Larisa Shepitko | 1938-1979 | | |
| Lewis Teague | 1938- | | |
| Paul Verhoeven | 1938- | | |
| Pupi Avati | 1938- | | |
| Michael Cimino | 1939-2016 | | |
| Francis Ford Coppola | 1939- | | |
| Krzysztof Zanussi | 1939- | | |
| Peter Bogdanovich | 1939-2022 | | |
| Wes Craven | 1939-2015 | | |
| John Badham | 1939- | | |
| Joel Schumacher | 1939-2020 | | |
| Vladimir Menshov | 1939-2021 | | |
| George A. Romero | 1940-2017 | | |
| Bernardo Bertolucci | 1940-2018 | | |
| James L. Brooks | 1940- | | |
| Abbas Kiarostami | 1940-2016 | | |
| Bruce Beresford | 1940- | | |
| Dario Argento | 1940- | | |
| Brian De Palma | 1940- | | |
| Chiem van Houweninge | 1940- | | |
| Andrzej Żuławski | 1940-2016 | | |
| Terry Gilliam | 1940- | | |
| Hayao Miyazaki | 1941- | | |
| Wolfgang Petersen | 1941-2022 | | |
| Stephen Frears | 1941- | | |
| Denys Arcand | 1941- | | |
| Krzysztof Kieślowski | 1941-1996 | | |
| Walter Hill | 1942- | | |
| Terry Jones | 1942-2020 | (Parry) | |
| Michael Haneke | 1942- | | |
| Mike Newell | 1942- | | |
| Peter Greenaway | 1942- | | |
| Barry Levinson | 1942- | | |
| John Kani | 1942- | | |
| Werner Herzog | 1942- | | |
| Martin Scorsese | 1942- | | |
| Michael Mann | 1943- | | |
| Mike Leigh | 1943- | | |
| David Geffen | 1943- | | |
| David Cronenberg | 1943- | | |
| Zeki Alasya | 1943-2015 | | |
| Hugh Wilson | 1943-2018 | | |
| Jerry Bruckheimer | 1943- | | |
| Jean-Jacques Annaud | 1943- | | |
| Penny Marshall | 1943-2018 | | |
| Jan de Bont | 1943- | | |
| Terrence Malick | 1943- | | |
| Férid Boughedir | 1944- | | |
| Lordan Zafranović | 1944- | | |
| Alan Parker | 1944-2020 | | |
| Jonathan Demme | 1944-2017 | | |
| Roger Rees | 1944-2015 | | |
| Jim Abrahams | 1944- | | |
| George Lucas | 1944- | | |
| Frank Oz | 1944- | | |
| Tony Scott | 1944-2012 | | |
| Peter Weir | 1944- | | |
| Şerif Gören | 1944- | | |
| Harold Ramis | 1944-2014 | | |
| Jeroen Krabbé | 1944- | | |
| Arnon Milchan | 1944- | | |
| Ulli Lommel | 1944-2017 | | |
| Taylor Hackford | 1944- | | |
| Michal Bat-Adam | 1945- | | |
| George Miller | 1945- | | |
| Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 1945-1982 | | |
| Wim Wenders | 1945- | | |
| Assi Dayan | 1945-2014 | | |
| John Banville | 1945- | | |
| David Lynch | 1946- | | |
| Adolf Winkelmann | 1946- | | |
| John Woo | 1946- | | |
| Lasse Hallström | 1946- | | |
| Gavin Richards | 1946- | | |
| Oliver Stone | 1946- | | |
| Ivan Reitman | 1946-2022 | | |
| Steven Spielberg | 1946- | | |
| Takeshi Kitano | 1947- | | |
| Ben Sombogaart | 1947- | | |
| Rajko Grlić | 1947- | | |
| David Zucker | 1947- | | |
| John Carpenter | 1948- | | |
| Agnieszka Holland | 1948- | | |
| Lawrence Kasdan | 1949- | | |
| Rakesh Roshan | 1949- | (Nagrath) | |
| Pedro Almodóvar | 1949- | (Caballero) | |
| Lee Cronin | 19xx- | | |
| John Hughes | 1950-2009 | | |
| Neil Jordan | 1950- | | |
| Jerry Zucker | 1950- | | |
| Piotr Szulkin | 1950-2018 | | |
| Chantal Akerman | 1950-2015 | | |
| John Landis | 1950- | | |
| Jeffrey Katzenberg | 1950- | | |
| John McTiernan | 1951- | | |
| Dick Maas | 1951- | | |
| Robert Zemeckis | 1951- | | |
| Julian Schnabel | 1951- | | |
| Zhang Yimou | 1951- | | |
| Kathryn Bigelow | 1951- | | |
| Harvey Weinstein | 1952- | | |
| Gus Van Sant | 1952- | | |
| Alex van Warmerdam | 1952- | | |
| Jakov Sedlar | 1952- | | |
| Stephen Poliakoff | 1952- | | |
| Jim Jarmusch | 1953- | | |
| Barry Sonnenfeld | 1953- | | |
| Kathleen Kennedy | 1953- | | |
| Moshe Ivgy | 1953- | | |
| Joel Coen | 1954- | | |
| Anthony Minghella | 1954-2008 | | |
| Idrissa Ouédraogo | 1954-2018 | | |
| Matt Groening | 1954- | | |
| Ron Howard | 1954- | | |
| Michael Moore | 1954- | | |
| Jane Campion | 1954- | | |
| Amy Heckerling | 1954- | | |
| James Cameron | 1954- | | |
| Goderdzi Chokheli | 1954-2007 | | |
| Eran Riklis | 1954- | | |
| Ang Lee | 1954- | | |
| Emir Kusturica | 1954- | | |
| Kevin Costner | 1955- | | |
| Nancy Oliver | 1955- | | |
| Linwood Boomer | 1955- | | |
| Fernando Meirelles | 1955- | (Ferreira) | |
| Roland Emmerich | 1955- | | |
| Ildikó Enyedi | 1955- | | |
| Mel Gibson | 1956- | | |
| Satish Kaushik | 1956-2023 | | |
| Lars von Trier | 1956- | | |
| Bob Nelson | 1956- | | |
| Danny Boyle | 1956- | | |
| Peter Farrelly | 1956- | | |
| Ethan Coen | 1957- | | |
| John Lasseter | 1957- | | |
| Jaco Van Dormael | 1957- | | |
| Stijn Coninx | 1957- | | |
| Jean van de Velde | 1957- | | |
| Spike Lee | 1957- | | |
| Cameron Crowe | 1957- | | |
| Theo van Gogh | 1957-2004 | | |
| Paweł Pawlikowski | 1957- | | |
| Branko Schmidt | 1957- | | |
| Brad Bird | 1957- | | |
| Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen | 1957-2005 | | |
| Zacharias Kunuk | 1957- | | |
| Guillermo Arriaga | 1958- | (Jordán) | |
| Keenen Ivory Wayans | 1958- | | |
| Bobby Farrelly | 1958- | | |
| Scott Rudin | 1958- | | |
| David O. Russell | 1958- | | |
| Tim Burton | 1958- | | |
| Chris Columbus | 1958- | | |
| Nuri Bilge Ceylan | 1959- | | |
| Frank Darabont | 1959- | | |
| Luc Besson | 1959- | | |
| Nick Cassavetes | 1959- | | |
| Sam Raimi | 1959- | | |
| Udi Aloni | 1959- | | |
| Susanne Bier | 1960- | | |
| Atom Egoyan | 1960- | | |
| Jon Landau | 1960-2024 | | |
| Richard Linklater | 1960- | | |
| Alexander Payne | 1961- | | |
| Aaron Sorkin | 1961- | | |
| David Heyman | 1961- | | |
| Stephen Hillenburg | 1961-2018 | | |
| Peter Jackson | 1961- | | |
| Alfonso Cuarón | 1961- | (Orozco) | |
| Stephen Sommers | 1962- | | |
| Tamara Jenkins | 1962- | | |
| David Fincher | 1962- | | |
| Nia Vardalos | 1962- | | |
| Mike Judge | 1962- | | |
| Ziad Doueiri | 1963- | | |
| Steven Soderbergh | 1963- | | |
| Quentin Tarantino | 1963- | | |
| Grant Heslov | 1963- | | |
| Dejan Aćimović | 1963- | | |
| Alessandro Camon | 1963- | | |
| Jon Turteltaub | 1963- | | |
| Alejandro González Iñárritu | 1963- | | |
| Fisher Stevens | 1963- | | |
| Armando Iannucci | 1963- | | |
| James Mangold | 1963- | | |
| Til Schweiger | 1963- | | |
| Derviş Zaim | 1964- | | |
| Vinko Brešan | 1964- | | |
| Andrey Zvyagintsev | 1964- | | |
| Todd Field | 1964- | | |
| Gore Verbinski | 1964- | | |
| Lisa Cholodenko | 1964- | | |
| Joss Whedon | 1964- | | |
| Guillermo del Toro | 1964- | (Gómez) | |
| Rob Zombie | 1965- | (Cummings) | |
| Marius Holst | 1965- | | |
| Michael Bay | 1965- | | |
| Paul W. S. Anderson | 1965- | | |
| Roman Coppola | 1965- | | |
| Lana Wachowski | 1965- | | |
| Sam Mendes | 1965- | | |
| Maria de Medeiros | 1965- | | |
| Bryan Singer | 1965- | | |
| Andrew Stanton | 1965- | | |
| Keir Pearson | 1966- | | |
| Zack Snyder | 1966- | | |
| J. J. Abrams | 1966- | | |
| Oren Moverman | 1966- | | |
| James Gunn | 1966- | | |
| Sherman Alexie | 1966- | | |
| Jon Favreau | 1966- | | |
| Lenny Abrahamson | 1966- | | |
| Bennett Miller | 1966- | | |
| Sam Taylor-Johnson | 1967- | (Wood) | |
| Michel Hazanavicius | 1967- | | |
| Mehran Modiri | 1967- | | |
| Carrie Preston | 1967- | | |
| Denis Villeneuve | 1967- | | |
| Judd Apatow | 1967- | | |
| Lilly Wachowski | 1967- | | |
| Edward Burns | 1968- | | |
| Adam McKay | 1968- | | |
| Guinevere Turner | 1968- | | |
| Robert Rodriguez | 1968- | | |
| Shawn Levy | 1968- | | |
| Guy Ritchie | 1968- | | |
| Darren Aronofsky | 1969- | | |
| Jason Blum | 1969- | | |
| Jez Butterworth | 1969- | | |
| Brett Ratner | 1969- | | |
| Martin Koolhoven | 1969- | | |
| Wes Anderson | 1969- | | |
| Stuart Blumberg | 1969- | | |
| Amma Asante | 1969- | | |
| Tyler Perry | 1969- | | |
| Bong Joon-ho | 1969- | | |
| Steve McQueen | 1969- | | |
| Trey Parker | 1969- | | |
| Spike Jonze | 1969- | | |
| Shonda Rhimes | 1970- | | |
| Anthony Russo | 1970- | | |
| Taylor Sheridan | 1970- | (Gibler) | |
| Paul Thomas Anderson | 1970- | | |
| Christopher Nolan | 1970- | | |
| Kevin Smith | 1970- | | |
| M. Night Shyamalan | 1970- | | |
| David Benioff | 1970- | | |
| Morgan Spurlock | 1970-2024 | | |
| Matthew Vaughn | 1971- | | |
| Rupert Sanders | 1971- | | |
| Sofia Coppola | 1971- | | |
| Matt Stone | 1971- | | |
| Joseph Russo | 1971- | | |
| Luca Guadagnino | 1971- | | |
| Veiko Õunpuu | 1972- | | |
| Asghar Farhadi | 1972- | | |
| Ben Affleck | 1972- | (Boldt) | |
| Tom Hooper | 1972- | | |
| Mark Boal | 1973- | | |
| Damon Lindelof | 1973- | | |
| Kevin Feige | 1973- | | |
| Vera Farmiga | 1973- | | |
| Kristen Wiig | 1973- | | |
| Yorgos Lanthimos | 1973- | | |
| Rian Johnson | 1973- | | |
| Kim van Kooten | 1974- | | |
| Sebastián Lelio | 1974- | (Watt) | |
| Jaume Collet-Serra | 1974- | | |
| Ruben Östlund | 1974- | | |
| Dalibor Matanić | 1975- | | |
| Mitra Farahani | 1975- | | |
| Ekta Kapoor | 1975- | | |
| Taika Waititi | 1975- | | |
| Brian Klugman | 1975- | | |
| Asia Argento | 1975- | | |
| Michelle Latimer | 1976- | | |
| Jonathan Nolan | 1976- | | |
| Jalil Lespert | 1976- | | |
| James Wan | 1977- | | |
| Sophie Hunter | 1978- | | |
| Diablo Cody | 1978- | (Busey, Maurio) | |
| Bora Dağtekin | 1978- | | |
| Jordan Peele | 1979- | | |
| Jelena Veljača | 1981- | | |
| Chloé Zhao | 1982- | | |
| Zoe Lister-Jones | 1982- | | |
| Benh Zeitlin | 1982- | | |
| Tanel Toom | 1982- | | |
| Jennifer Podemski | 1983- | | |
| Greta Gerwig | 1983- | | |
| Justin Baldoni | 1984- | | |
| Veronica Kedar | 1984- | | |
| Issa Rae | 1985- | (Diop) | |
| Damien Chazelle | 1985- | | |
| Celine Song | 1988- | | |
| Tessa Schram | 1988- | | |
| Xavier Dolan | 1989- | (Tadros) | |
| Hannah Marks | 1993- | |