20 directors you might not know
20 up-and-coming, criminally underrated, or newly arrived filmmakers. I wish the list did have more of an international flavor, but I've been lazy with my cinema-going as of late.
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Bruno Dumont was born on 14 March 1958 in Bailleul, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He is a writer and director, known for Li'l Quinquin (2014), The Life of Jesus (1997) and Camille Claudel 1915 (2013).- Director
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- Cinematographer
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on April 13, 1944, Charles Burnett moved with his family to the Watts area of Los Angeles at an early age. He describes the community of having a robust mythical connection with the South as a result of having so many Southern transplants, an atmosphere which has informed much of his work. Burnett went to UCLA, where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Filmmaking. There, he was greatly influenced by professors Elyseo Taylor-creator of the Ethno-Communications department-and Basil Wright-the English documentarian famous for Night Mail and Songs of Ceylon. He became fast friends with fellow future greats like Haile Gerima (Sankofa), and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), collaborating with them and others on many projects. Burnett cites Jean Renoir, Satyajit Ray, and Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker) as important influences. In 1988, Burnett received the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the "genius grant"), which helped him support his young family and concentrate on his then, newest script. With Danny Glover parlaying his success in Lethal Weapon, they wrangled funding for the production of Burnett's To Sleep With Anger. Glover, playing a vaguely supernatural Southern trickster overstaying his welcome while visiting family, found perhaps his most critically acclaimed role. It won the 1991 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Burnett and Best Actor for Glover. The Library of Congress selected Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger to be inducted into the National Film Registry. The National Society of Film Critics honored Burnett for best screenplay for To Sleep With Anger, making him the first African-American to win in this category in the group's 25year history. While the Los Angeles Times reported that Burnett's movie reminded viewers of Anton Chekov, Time magazine wrote: "If Spike Lee's films are the equivalent of rap music - urgent, explosive, profane, then Burnett's movie is good, old urban blues." The film also received a Special Jury Recognition Award at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival and a Special Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Both Burnett and Glover were nominated for New York Film Critics Circle Awards. In 1997, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival honored Burnett with a retrospective, Witnessing For Everyday Heroes, presented at New York's Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center. Burnett has been awarded grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the J. P. Getty Foundation. He is also the winner of the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award, and one of the very few people ever to be honored with Howard University's Paul Robeson Award for achievement in cinema. The Chicago Tribune has called him "one of America's very best filmmakers" and the New York Times named him "the nation's least known great filmmaker and most gifted black director." Burnett has even had a day named after him - the mayor of Seattle declared February 20, 1997, as Charles Burnett Day. Burnett directed a documentary on Nat Turner and one chapter (Warming by The Devil's Fire) of the six part documentary, The Blues, a production of Martin Scorsese's CPA Productions with OffLine Entertainment and in November of 2017 Charles Burnett received an Academy Award for his life's work. His latest film is entitled, "The Power To Heal", a documentary about the integration of hospitals during the Civil Rights Era.- Editor
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Ryan Kyle Coogler is an African-American filmmaker and producer who is from Oakland, California. He is known for directing the Black Panther film series, Creed, a Rocky spin-off and Fruitvale Station. He frequently casts Michael B. Jordan in his works. He produced the Creed sequels, Judas and the Black Messiah and Space Jam: A New Legacy. He is married to Zinzi since 2016.- Director
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Harmony Korine was born in 1973 in Bolinas, California. His family moved to the east coast of the United States when he was five, and he spent his early years in Nashville, Tennessee, and New York. At the age of nineteen, he wrote the critically acclaimed screenplay Kids (1995) for director Larry Clark. At the time of release of Gummo (1997), he was at work writing a new feature and a 10-part decalogue called "Jokes," which is to be financed through French investors.- Director
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Born in New York City and raised in Sunnyside, Queens and then Westchester County, Benh Zeitlin began his career as a film-maker at the tender age of 6 years when he and a friend made a Batman movie. He continued making films as a child before attending Wesleyan University, where he majored in film. After graduation, Benh spent a summer in Prague working with a prominent animation artist. Returning to the U.S., he worked in a private school in Manhattan helping elementary students create short films.- Director
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Lance Hammer is known for Ballast (2008), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) and Batman & Robin (1997).- Writer
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Filmmaker Magazine rated her #1 in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004!
She is a performance artist and published short story writer. Since becoming a filmmaker, her debut feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) has won several film awards.
Daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger, writers and publishers who founded North Atlantic Books.- Director
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E. Elias Merhige was born in 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Shadow of the Vampire (2000), Begotten (1989) and Suspect Zero (2004).- Director
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Andrew Dominik was born on 7 October 1967 in Wellington, New Zealand. He is a director and writer, known for Chopper (2000), Blonde (2022) and Killing Them Softly (2012).- Composer
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Writer-director Shane Carruth, a former software engineer, burst onto the independent movie scene with his extremely low-budget science-fiction film Primer (2004) in 2004. Carruth also played one of the two leads in the film and composed its music. "Primer" won the Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 1972, Carruth studied mathematics in college and became a flight simulation software developer before making his first movie. Carruth then spent the next eight years developing "A Topiary", another science-fiction film. The movie was never made and Carruth said that "I basically wasted my whole life on" the project.
Carruth finally made a second film, Upstream Color (2013), which was released in 2013 after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival. He is working on his third film, "The Modern Ocean".- Writer
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Jeff Nichols was born on 7 December 1978 in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. He is a writer and director, known for Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2012) and Midnight Special (2016).- Actress
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Andrea Arnold was born on 5 April 1961 in Dartford, Kent, England, UK. She is an actress and director, known for American Honey (2016), Fish Tank (2009) and Red Road (2006).- Producer
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J.C. Chandor is known for A Most Violent Year (2014), Margin Call (2011) and All Is Lost (2013). He has been married to Mary Cameron Goodyear since 2004. They have two children.- Director
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Catherine Shortland is an Australian filmmaker from Temora, New South Wales who is known for directing the Marvel film "Black Widow." She also directed the feature-length films "Somersault", "Lore", and "Berlin Syndrome." She directed the short films "Pentuphouse", "Flowergirl", and "Joy." She is married to Tony Krawitz and they have two children.- Actor
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John Cameron Mitchell was born on 21 April 1963 in El Paso, Texas, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Shortbus (2006) and How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017).- Writer
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Martin McDonagh was born on 26 March 1970 in Camberwell, London, England, UK. He is a writer and director, known for In Bruges (2008), Seven Psychopaths (2012) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).- Writer
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John Michael McDonagh was born in 1967 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and director, known for The Guard (2011), Calvary (2014) and The Forgiven (2021). He has been married to Elizabeth Eves since 2003.- Director
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A literature and philosophy graduate, with extensive post-graduate work at Oxford on German literature, Polish-born Pawel Pawlikowski started as a documentary filmmaker in British television.
His second feature, Last Resort (2000), earned him international critical acclaim at numerous festivals, including Toronto and Sundance, and won the 2001 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for "Most Promising Newcomer in British Film."
His next film, My Summer of Love (2004), won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards in 2005.- Actor
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Takeshi Kitano originally studied to become an engineer, but was thrown out of school for rebellious behavior. He learned comedy, singing and dancing from famed comedian Senzaburô Fukami. Working as a lift boy on a nightclub with such features as comic sketches and striptease dancing, Kitano saw his chance when a comedian suddenly fell ill, and he went on stage in the man's place. With a friend he formed the comic duo "The Two Beat" (his artist's name, "Beat Takeshi", comes from this period), which became very popular on Japanese television.
Kitano soon embarked on an acting career, and when the director of Violent Cop (1989) (aka "Violent Cop") fell ill, he took over that function as well. Immediately after that film was finished he set out to make a second gangster movie, Boiling Point (1990). Just after finishing Getting Any? (1994), Kitano was involved in a serious motorcycle accident that almost killed him. It changed his way of life, and he became an active painter. This change can be seen in his later films, which are characterized by his giving more importance to the aesthetics of the film, such as in Fireworks (1997) and Kikujiro (1999).