1940s

• 1948: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
  
   - A Letter to Three Wives
  A Letter to Three Wives
  A Letter to Three Wives is a 1949 film which tells the story of a woman who mails a letter to three women, telling them she has left town with the husband of one of them. It stars Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas in his film debut, Jeffrey Lynn, and Thelma Ritter...
  
  
  • Howard Hawks
    Howard Hawks
    Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
    
     - Red River
  • Anatole Litvak
    Anatole Litvak
    Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages...
    
     - The Snake Pit
    The Snake Pit
    The Snake Pit is a 1948 American drama film directed by Anatole Litvak. The film tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and cannot remember how she got there, and stars Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Beulah Bondi, and Lee Patrick.The film was...
    
    
  • Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
    
     - The Search
    The Search
    The Search is a 1948 film directed by Fred Zinnemann which tells the story of a young Auschwitz survivor and his mother who search for each other across post-World War II Europe...
    
    

• 1949: Robert Rossen
  Robert Rossen
  Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades. His 1949 film All the King's Men won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, while Rossen was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director...
  
   - All the King's Men
  All the King's Men (1949 film)
  All the King's Men is a 1949 drama film based on the Robert Penn Warren novel of the same name. It was directed by Robert Rossen and starred Broderick Crawford in the role of Willie Stark.-Plot:...
  
  
  • Carol Reed
    Carol Reed
    Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...
    
     - The Third Man
    The Third Man
    The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir, directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Many critics rank it as a masterpiece, particularly remembered for its atmospheric cinematography, performances, and unique musical score...
    
    
  • Mark Robson
    Mark Robson
    Mark Robson was a Canadian-born film editor, film director and producer in Hollywood.-Career:Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to the United States at a young age. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles then found work in the prop department at 20th Century Fox studios...
    
     - Champion
    Champion (1949 film)
    Champion is an American film noir drama based on a short story by Ring Lardner. Filmed in black-and-white, it recounts the struggles of boxer "Midge" Kelly fighting his own demons while working to achieve success in the boxing ring. The drama was directed by Mark Robson, with cinematography by...
    
    
  • Alfred L. Werker
    Alfred L. Werker
    Alfred L. Werker was a film director whose work in movies spanned from 1917 through 1957. After a number of film production jobs and assistant directing, Werker co-directed his first film, Ridin' the Wind in 1925 alongside director Del Andrews...
    
     - Lost Boundaries
    Lost Boundaries
    Lost Boundaries is a film released in 1949. The film was directed by Alfred L. Werker and starred , Mel Ferrer, and Susan Douglas Rubes. The film is based on the book by William Lindsay White, relating the true story of , a graduate of Rush Medical College whose family passed for white while living...
    
    

1950s

• 1950: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
  
   - All About Eve
  All About Eve
  All About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on the 1946 short story "The Wisdom of Eve", by Mary Orr.The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star...
  
  
  • John Huston
    John Huston
    John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
    
     - The Asphalt Jungle
    The Asphalt Jungle
    The Asphalt Jungle is a 1950 film noir directed by John Huston. The caper film is based on the novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett and stars an ensemble cast including Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, and, in a minor but key role, Marilyn Monroe, an unknown...
    
    
  • Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
    
     - Father's Little Dividend
    Father's Little Dividend
    Father's Little Dividend is a 1951 comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor. The movie is the sequel to Father of the Bride ....
    
    
  • Billy Wilder
    Billy Wilder
    Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
    
     - Sunset Boulevard
    Sunset Boulevard (film)
    Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett...
    
    

• 1951: George Stevens
  George Stevens
  George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank , nominated for Best Director, Giant , winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane , Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun , winner of Oscar for Best...
  
   - A Place in the Sun

• 1952: John Ford
  John Ford
  John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
  
   - The Quiet Man
  The Quiet Man
  The Quiet Man is a 1952 American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film. It was directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald. It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh...
  
  

• 1953: Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
  
   - From Here to Eternity
  From Here to Eternity
  From Here to Eternity is a 1953 drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and based on the novel of the same name by James Jones. It deals with the troubles of soldiers, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine stationed on Hawaii in the months leading up to the...
  
  

• 1954: Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan
  Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
  
   - On the Waterfront
  On the Waterfront
  On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
  
  

• 1955: Delbert Mann
  Delbert Mann
  Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty...
  
   - Marty
  Marty (film)
  Marty is a 1955 American film directed by Delbert Mann. The screenplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky, expanding upon his 1953 teleplay of the same name. The film stars Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. The film enjoyed international success, winning the 1955 Academy Award for Best Picture and...
  
  

• 1956: George Stevens
  George Stevens
  George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank , nominated for Best Director, Giant , winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane , Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun , winner of Oscar for Best...
  
   - Giant

• 1957: David Lean
  David Lean
  Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
  
   - The Bridge on the River Kwai
  The Bridge on the River Kwai
  The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars William...
  
  

• 1958: Vincente Minnelli
  Vincente Minnelli
  Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
  
   - Gigi

• 1959: William Wyler
  William Wyler
  William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
  
   - Ben-Hur
  Ben-Hur (1959 film)
  Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
  
  

1960s

• 1960: Billy Wilder
  Billy Wilder
  Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
  
   - The Apartment
  The Apartment
  The Apartment is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. It was Wilder's follow-up to the enormously popular Some Like It Hot and, like its predecessor, was a commercial and critical hit, grossing $25...
  
  
  • Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer.-Early life and career:...
    
     - Elmer Gantry
    Elmer Gantry (film)
    Elmer Gantry is a 1960 drama film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. Adapted by director Richard Brooks, the film is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis and stars Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons.Lancaster won an Academy Award for...
    
    
  • Jack Cardiff
    Jack Cardiff
    Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
    
     - Sons and Lovers
    Sons and Lovers (1960 film)
    Sons and Lovers is a British 1960 film adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers. It was adapted by T. E. B. Clarke and Gavin Lambert and directed by Jack Cardiff...
    
    
  • Vincent J. Donehue
    Vincent J. Donehue
    Vincent Julian Donehue was an American director noted mainly for his theatre work, with occasional film and television credits....
    
     - Sunrise at Campobello
    Sunrise at Campobello
    Sunrise at Campobello is a 1960 American biographical film made by Dore Schary Productions and Warner Bros. It tells the story of the initial struggle by future President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his family when he was stricken with paralysis at the age of 39 in August...
    
    
  • Lewis Gilbert
    Lewis Gilbert
    Lewis Gilbert CBE is an English film director, producer and screenwriter.-Early life:He was the son of music hall performers, and spent his early years travelling with his parents, and watching the shows from the side of the stage. He first performed on-stage at the age of 5, when asked to drive a...
    
     - Sink the Bismarck!
    Sink the Bismarck!
    Sink the Bismarck! is a 1960 black-and-white British war film based on the book, the "Last Nine Days of the Bismarck" by C. S. Forester. It stars Kenneth More and Dana Wynter and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. To date, it is the only movie made that deals directly with the operations, chase, and...
    
    
  • Alfred Hitchcock
    Alfred Hitchcock
    Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
    
     - Psycho
    Psycho (1960 film)
    Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
    
    
  • Walter Lang
    Walter Lang
    Walter Lang was an American film director.-Early life:Walter Lang was born in Memphis, Tennessee. As a young man he went to New York City where he found clerical work at a film production company. The business piqued his artistic instincts and he began learning the various facets of filmmaking...
    
     - Can-Can
    Can-Can (film)
    Can-Can is a 1960 musical film made by Suffolk-Cummings productions and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Walter Lang, produced by Jack Cummings and Saul Chaplin, from a screenplay by Dorothy Kingsley and Charles Lederer, loosely based on the musical play by Abe Burrows with music...
    
    
  • Delbert Mann
    Delbert Mann
    Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty...
    
     - The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
    The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
    The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1957 play by William Inge about family conflicts during the early 1920s in a small Oklahoma town. It won the Tony Award for Best Play and was made into a film in 1960.-Plot:...
    
    
  • Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
    
     - Bells Are Ringing
    Bells Are Ringing (film)
    Bells Are Ringing is a 1960 romantic comedy-musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli. It stars Judy Holliday and Dean Martin.-Synopsis:Based on the successful 1956 Broadway production of the same name by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne, the film focuses on Ella Peterson, who works in...
    
    
  • Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli
    Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
    
     - Home from the Hill
    Home from the Hill (film)
    Home from the Hill is a 1960 film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Everett Sloane, and Luana Patten....
    
    
  • Carol Reed
    Carol Reed
    Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...
    
     - Our Man in Havana
    Our Man in Havana (film)
    Our Man in Havana is a 1959 film directed and produced by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Noel Coward and Ernie Kovacs. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Graham Greene...
    
    
  • Alain Resnais
    Alain Resnais
    Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
    
     - Hiroshima, My Love (Hiroshima mon amour)
    Hiroshima Mon Amour
    Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
    
    
  • Charles Walters
    Charles Walters
    Charles Walters was a Hollywood director and choreographer most noted for his work in MGM musicals and comedies in from the 1940s to the 1960s....
    
     - Please Don't Eat the Daisies
    Please Don't Eat The Daisies
    Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a best-selling collection of humorous essays by American humorist and playwright Jean Kerr about suburban living and raising four boys. The essays do not have a plot or through-storyline, but the book sold so well it was later adapted into a film starring Doris Day...
    
    
  • Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
    
     - The Sundowners
    The Sundowners
    The Sundowners is a 1960 film that tells the story of an Australian outback family torn between the father's desires to continue his nomadic sheep-herding ways and the wife's and son's desire to settle down in one place...
    
    

• 1963: Tony Richardson
  Tony Richardson
  Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...
  
   - Tom Jones
  Tom Jones (film)
  Tom Jones is a 1963 British adventure comedy film, an adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling , starring Albert Finney as the titular hero. It was one of the most critically acclaimed and popular comedies of its time, winning four Academy Awards...
  
  
  • Federico Fellini
    Federico Fellini
    Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
    
     - 8½
    8½
    8½ is a 1963 Italian fantasy film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director...
    
    
  • Elia Kazan
    Elia Kazan
    Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
    
     - America, America
    America, America
    America, America is a 1963 American dramatic film directed, produced and written by Elia Kazan, from his own book.-Plot:...
    
    
  • Ralph Nelson
    Ralph Nelson
    Ralph Nelson was an American movie and television director, producer, writer, and actor.-Life and career:...
    
     - Lilies of the Field
  • Martin Ritt
    Martin Ritt
    Martin Ritt was an American director, actor, and playwright who worked in both film and theater. He was born in New York City.-Early career and influences:...
    
     - Hud
    Hud (film)
    Hud is a 1963 western film whose title character is an embittered and selfish modern-day cowboy. With screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., based on Larry McMurtry's 1961 novel Horseman, Pass By, it was directed by Martin Ritt and stars Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal and...
    
    

• 1964: George Cukor
  George Cukor
  George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
  
   - My Fair Lady
  My Fair Lady (film)
  My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
  
  
  • Peter Glenville
    Peter Glenville
    Peter Glenville , born Peter Patrick Brabazon Browne, was an English film and stage actor and director.-Biography:...
    
     - Becket
  • John Huston
    John Huston
    John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
    
     - The Night of the Iguana
    The Night of the Iguana (film)
    The Night of the Iguana is a 1964 film based on the 1961 play The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams. Directed by John Huston, it starred Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. It won the 1964 Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best...
    
    
  • Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
    
     - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
    Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
    Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, commonly known as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 black comedy film which satirizes the nuclear scare. It was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, and featuring Sterling...
    
    
  • Robert Stevenson
    Robert Stevenson (director)
    Robert Stevenson was an English film writer and director. He was educated at Cambridge University where he became the president of both the Liberal Club and the Cambridge Union Society....
    
     - Mary Poppins
    Mary Poppins (film)
    Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by...
    
    

• 1965: Robert Wise
  Robert Wise
  Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
  
   - The Sound of Music
  The Sound of Music
  The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
  
  
  • Sidney J. Furie
    Sidney J. Furie
    Sidney J. Furie is a Canadian film director. Furie is perhaps best known for directing American Soldiers, The IPCRESS File, The Entity, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Lady Sings the Blues, The Boys, Gable and Lombard, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York and the Iron Eagle films.Also...
    
     - The Ipcress File
    The Ipcress File (film)
    The Ipcress File is a 1965 British espionage film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Michael Caine, Guy Doleman, and Nigel Green. The screenplay by Bill Canaway and James Doran was based on Len Deighton's 1962 novel, The IPCRESS File. It has won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award for best...
    
    
  • Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
    
     - The Pawnbroker
    The Pawnbroker
    The Pawnbroker is a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant which tells the story of Sol Nazerman, a concentration camp survivor who suffers flashbacks of his past Nazi imprisonment as he tries to cope with his daily life operating a pawn shop in East Harlem...
    
    
  • John Schlesinger
    John Schlesinger
    John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
    
     - Darling
    Darling (film)
    Darling is a 1965 British comedy/drama film written by Frederic Raphael, directed by John Schlesinger, and starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey. It is considered one of Schlesinger's best films and an insightful satire of mid-sixties British culture...
    
    
  • Elliot Silverstein
    Elliot Silverstein
    Elliot Silverstein, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on August 3, 1927, is best known for being the director of the movie Cat Ballou.-Career:Elliot Silverstein was the director of six feature films in the mid-twentieth century...
    
     - Cat Ballou
    Cat Ballou
    Cat Ballou is a 1965 comedy/Western film which tells the story of a woman who hires a famous gunman to protect her father's ranch, and later to avenge his murder, but finds that the man she hires is not what she expected...
    
    

• 1966: Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann
  Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
  
   - A Man for All Seasons
  A Man for All Seasons
  A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, and a one-hour live television version starring Bernard Hepton was produced in 1957 by the BBC, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage.It was...
  
  
  • Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer.-Early life and career:...
    
     - The Professionals
  • John Frankenheimer
    John Frankenheimer
    John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...
    
     - Grand Prix
  • Lewis Gilbert
    Lewis Gilbert
    Lewis Gilbert CBE is an English film director, producer and screenwriter.-Early life:He was the son of music hall performers, and spent his early years travelling with his parents, and watching the shows from the side of the stage. He first performed on-stage at the age of 5, when asked to drive a...
    
     - Alfie
  • James Hill
    James Hill (British director)
    James Hill was a British film and television director, screenwriter and producer whose career spanned 52 years between 1937–1989, best remembered for his documentaries and short subjects such as Giuseppina and The Home Made Car, and as director of the internationally acclaimed Born Free.Hill...
    
     - Born Free
    Born Free
    Born Free is a 1966 British drama film starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, a real-life couple who raised Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lion cub, to adulthood, and released her into the wilds of Kenya. The movie was produced by Open Road Films Ltd. and Columbia...
    
    
  • Norman Jewison
    Norman Jewison
    Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, O.Ont is a Canadian film director, producer, actor and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Highlights of his directing career include In the Heat of the Night , The Thomas Crown Affair , Fiddler on the Roof , Jesus Christ Superstar , Moonstruck , The Hurricane and The...
    
     - The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
    The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
    The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming is an American comedy film. Based on the Nathaniel Benchley novel The Off-Islanders, the film was directed by Norman Jewison and adapted for the screen by William Rose....
    
    
  • Claude Lelouch - A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme)
    A Man and a Woman
    A Man and a Woman is a 1966 French film, written by Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven, and directed by Lelouch. It is notable for its lush photography , which features frequent segues between full color, black-and-white, and sepia-toned shots, and for its memorable musical score by Francis Lai...
    
    
  • Silvio Narizzano
    Silvio Narizzano
    Silvio Narizzano was a Canadian film director, educated at Bishop's University, Quebec.His best received film was Georgy Girl , which was entered into the 16th Berlin International Film Festival...
    
     - Georgy Girl
    Georgy Girl
    Georgy Girl is a 1966 British film based on a novel by Margaret Forster. The film was directed by Silvio Narizzano and starred Lynn Redgrave as Georgy, Alan Bates, James Mason, Charlotte Rampling and Bill Owen....
    
    
  • Mike Nichols
    Mike Nichols
    Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
    
     - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (film)
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a 1966 American drama film directed by Mike Nichols. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is an adaptation of the play of the same title by Edward Albee...
    
    
  • Robert Wise
    Robert Wise
    Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
    
     - The Sand Pebbles
    The Sand Pebbles
    The Sand Pebbles is a 1962 novel by American author Richard McKenna about a Yangtze River gunboat in 1926. It was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post for the three issues from November 17, 1962 through December 1, 1962. The author completed it in May, 1962, just in time to enter it in the 1963...
    
    

• 1967: Mike Nichols
  Mike Nichols
  Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
  
   - The Graduate
  The Graduate
  The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Mike Nichols. It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder...
  
  
  • Robert Aldrich
    Robert Aldrich
    Robert Aldrich was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .-Biography:Robert...
    
     - The Dirty Dozen
    The Dirty Dozen
    The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 film directed by Robert Aldrich and released by MGM. It was filmed in England and features an ensemble cast, including Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, and Robert Webber. The film is based on E. M...
    
    
  • Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks
    Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer.-Early life and career:...
    
     - In Cold Blood
    In Cold Blood (film)
    In Cold Blood is a 1967 film based on Truman Capote's book of the same name. Richard Brooks prepared the adaptation and directed the film. Some scenes were filmed on the locations of the original events, in Garden City and Holcomb, Kansas including the Clutter residence...
    
    
  • James Clavell
    James Clavell
    James Clavell, born Charles Edmund DuMaresq Clavell was an Australian-born, British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war...
    
     - To Sir, with Love
    To Sir, with Love
    To Sir, With Love is a 1967 British drama film starring Sidney Poitier that deals with social and racial issues in an inner city school. James Clavell both directed and wrote the film's screenplay, based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by E. R. Braithwaite.The film's title song...
    
    
  • Stanley Donen
    Stanley Donen
    Stanley Donen ; is an American film director and choreographer whose most celebrated works are Singin' in the Rain and On the Town, both of which he co-directed with Gene Kelly. His other noteworthy films include Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face, Indiscreet, Damn...
    
     - Two for the Road
  • Norman Jewison
    Norman Jewison
    Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, O.Ont is a Canadian film director, producer, actor and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Highlights of his directing career include In the Heat of the Night , The Thomas Crown Affair , Fiddler on the Roof , Jesus Christ Superstar , Moonstruck , The Hurricane and The...
    
     - In the Heat of the Night
  • Stanley Kramer
    Stanley Kramer
    Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
    
     - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
    Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
    Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a 1967 American drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, and featuring Hepburn's niece Katharine Houghton...
    
    
  • Arthur Penn
    Arthur Penn
    Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
    
     - Bonnie and Clyde
    Bonnie and Clyde
    Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...
    
    
  • Stuart Rosenberg
    Stuart Rosenberg
    Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke , Voyage of the Damned , The Amityville Horror , and The Pope of Greenwich Village .-Early life and career:Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Rosenberg studied Irish...
    
     - Cool Hand Luke
    Cool Hand Luke
    Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D...
    
    
  • Joseph Strick
    Joseph Strick
    Joseph Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strick briefly attended UCLA before enrolling in the Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach...
    
     - Ulysses

• 1968: Anthony Harvey
  Anthony Harvey
  Anthony Harvey is a British filmmaker who started his career in the 1950s as a film editor, and moved into directing in the mid 1960s. Harvey has fifteen film credits as an editor, and he has directed thirteen films...
  
   - The Lion in Winter
  The Lion in Winter
  -Synopsis:Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's château in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173...
  
  
  • Paul Almond
    Paul Almond
    Paul Almond, is a Canadian former television and motion picture screenwriter, director and producer, and since 1990 has been a novelist.-Life and career:...
    
     - Isabel
    Isabel
    Isabel is a Romance-language given name. It is related to Isabelle , Catalan, Provençal), Isabella , and the English Elizabeth.-Etymology:...
    
    
  • Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
    
     - 2001: A Space Odyssey
    2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
    2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
    
    
  • Jirí Menzel
    Jirí Menzel
    Jiří Menzel is a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography...
    
     - Closely Watched Trains (Ostre sledované vlaky)
    Closely Watched Trains
    Closely Watched Trains is a 1966 Czechoslovak film directed by Jiří Menzel. It was released in the United Kingdom as Closely Observed Trains. It is a coming-of-age story about a boy working at a train station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. The film is based on a story by...
    
    
  • Paul Newman
    Paul Newman
    Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
    
     - Rachel, Rachel
    Rachel, Rachel
    Rachel, Rachel is a 1968 American drama film produced and directed by Paul Newman. The screenplay by Stewart Stern is based on the 1966 novel A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence.-Plot:...
    
    
  • Roman Polanski
    Roman Polanski
    Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
    
     - Rosemary's Baby
    Rosemary's Baby (film)
    Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on the bestselling 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin...
    
    
  • Carol Reed
    Carol Reed
    Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...
    
     - Oliver!
    Oliver!
    Oliver! is a British musical, with script, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens....
    
    
  • Gene Saks
    Gene Saks
    Gene Saks is an American stage and film director.-Life and career:Saks was born in New York City, the son of Beatrix and Morris J. Saks...
    
     - The Odd Couple
    The Odd Couple (film)
    The Odd Couple is a 1968 comedy film written by Neil Simon, based on his play The Odd Couple, directed by Gene Saks, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau...
    
    
  • William Wyler
    William Wyler
    William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
    
     - Funny Girl
    Funny Girl (film)
    Funny Girl is a 1968 romantic musical film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart was adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title...
    
    
  • Franco Zeffirelli
    Franco Zeffirelli
    Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
    
     - Romeo and Juliet
    Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
    Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
    
    

• 1969: John Schlesinger
  John Schlesinger
  John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
  
   - Midnight Cowboy
  Midnight Cowboy
  Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
  
  
  • Richard Attenborough
    Richard Attenborough
    Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
    
     - Oh! What a Lovely War
    Oh! What a Lovely War
    Oh! What a Lovely War is a musical film based on the stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! originated by Charles Chilton as a radio play, The Long Long Trail in December 1961, and transferred to stage by Gerry Raffles in partnership with Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop created in 1963,...
    
    
  • Costa-Gavras
    Costa-Gavras
    Costa-Gavras, is a Greek filmmaker, who lives and works in France, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z...
    
     - Z
    Z (film)
    Z is a 1969 French language political thriller directed by Costa Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek...
    
    
  • George Roy Hill
    George Roy Hill
    George Roy Hill was an American film director. He is most noted for directing such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, which both starred the acting duo Paul Newman and Robert Redford...
    
     - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
    Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman...
    
    
  • Dennis Hopper
    Dennis Hopper
    Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
    
     - Easy Rider
    Easy Rider
    Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
    
    
  • Gene Kelly
    Gene Kelly
    Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
    
     - Hello, Dolly!
  • Larry Peerce
    Larry Peerce
    Larry Peerce is an American film and TV director whose work includes the theatrical feature Goodbye, Columbus, the early rock and roll concert film The Big T.N.T. Show, and One Potato, Two Potato , the first U.S...
    
     - Goodbye, Columbus
    Goodbye, Columbus
    Goodbye, Columbus is a 1959 book by American novelist Philip Roth. It was the writer's first book: a collection of five short stories and one novella, also titled "Goodbye, Columbus"....
    
    
  • Sam Peckinpah
    Sam Peckinpah
    David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
    
     - The Wild Bunch
    The Wild Bunch
    The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah about an aging outlaw gang on the Texas-Mexico border, trying to exist in the changing "modern" world of 1913...
    
    
  • Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Irwin Pollack was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he later taught acting...
    
     - They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
  • Haskell Wexler
    Haskell Wexler
    Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
    
     - Medium Cool
    Medium Cool
    Medium Cool is an American film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968...
    
    

1970s

• 1970: Franklin J. Schaffner - Patton
  Patton (film)
  Patton is a 1970 American biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H...
  
  
  • Robert Altman
    Robert Altman
    Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
    
     - M* A* S* H
    MASH (film)
    MASH is a 1970 American satirical dark comedy film directed by Robert Altman and written by Ring Lardner, Jr., based on Richard Hooker's novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. It is the only feature film in the M*A*S*H franchise...
    
    
  • Arthur Hiller
    Arthur Hiller
    Arthur Hiller, OC is a Canadian film director. His filmography includes 33 major studio releases, including the 1970 film Love Story...
    
     - Love Story
    Love Story (1970 film)
    Love Story is a 1970 romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and based on his novel Love Story. It was directed by Arthur Hiller. The film, well known as a tragedy, is considered one of the most romantic of all time by the American Film Institute , and was followed by a sequel, Oliver's Story...
    
    
  • David Lean
    David Lean
    Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
    
     - Ryan's Daughter
    Ryan's Daughter
    Ryan's Daughter is a 1970 film directed by David Lean. The film, set in 1916, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite opposition from her nationalist neighbours...
    
    
  • Bob Rafelson
    Bob Rafelson
    Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of...
    
     - Five Easy Pieces
    Five Easy Pieces
    Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 American drama film written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson, and directed by Rafelson. The film stars Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Susan Anspach. The cast also includes Billy 'Green' Bush, Fannie Flagg, Ralph Waite, Sally Struthers, Lois Smith, Toni Basil, and...
    
    

• 1971: William Friedkin
  William Friedkin
  William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...
  
   - The French Connection
  The French Connection (film)
  This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
  
  
  • Peter Bogdanovich
    Peter Bogdanovich
    Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
    
     - The Last Picture Show
    The Last Picture Show
    The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from a semi-autobiographical 1966 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry....
    
    
  • Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
    
     - A Clockwork Orange
    A Clockwork Orange (film)
    A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
    
    
  • Robert Mulligan
    Robert Mulligan
    Robert Mulligan was an American film and television director best known as the director of humanistic American dramas, including To Kill A Mockingbird , Summer of '42 , The Other , Same Time, Next Year and The Man in the Moon...
    
     - Summer of '42
    Summer of '42
    Summer of '42 is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher. It tells the story of how Raucher, in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation on Nantucket Island, off the coast of New England, embarked on a one-sided romance with a woman, Dorothy,...
    
    
  • John Schlesinger
    John Schlesinger
    John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
    
     - Sunday Bloody Sunday
    Sunday Bloody Sunday (film)
    Sunday Bloody Sunday is a 1971 British drama film directed by John Schlesinger and starring Murray Head, Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch. It tells the story of a free-spirited young bisexual artist and his simultaneous relationships with a female recruitment consultant and a male Jewish doctor...
    
    

• 1972: Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
  
   - The Godfather
  The Godfather
  The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
  
  
  • John Boorman
    John Boorman
    John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.-Early life:Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...
    
     - Deliverance
    Deliverance
    Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty in his film debut. The film is based on a 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey, who has a small role in the...
    
    
  • Bob Fosse
    Bob Fosse
    Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...
    
     - Cabaret
    Cabaret (film)
    Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party....
    
    
  • Martin Ritt
    Martin Ritt
    Martin Ritt was an American director, actor, and playwright who worked in both film and theater. He was born in New York City.-Early career and influences:...
    
     - Sounder
    Sounder (film)
    Sounder is a 1972 film starring Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Mathews, Taj Mahal, Eric Hooks and Janet MacLachlan. It was adapted by Lonne Elder III and directed by Martin Ritt from the 1970 Newbery Medal-winning novel Sounder by William H...
    
    
  • George Roy Hill
    George Roy Hill
    George Roy Hill was an American film director. He is most noted for directing such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, which both starred the acting duo Paul Newman and Robert Redford...
    
     - Slaughterhouse-Five
    Slaughterhouse-Five (film)
    Slaughterhouse-Five is a 1972 film based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name. The screenplay is by Stephen Geller and the film was directed by George Roy Hill. It stars Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, and Valerie Perrine, and features Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Holly Near, and Perry King. The...
    
    

• 1973: George Roy Hill
  George Roy Hill
  George Roy Hill was an American film director. He is most noted for directing such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, which both starred the acting duo Paul Newman and Robert Redford...
  
   - The Sting
  The Sting
  The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss . The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Created by...
  
  
  • Bernardo Bertolucci
    Bernardo Bertolucci
    Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...
    
     - Last Tango in Paris (Ultimo tango a Parigi)
    Last Tango in Paris
    Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...
    
    
  • William Friedkin
    William Friedkin
    William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...
    
     - The Exorcist
    The Exorcist (film)
    The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
    
    
  • George Lucas
    George Lucas
    George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
    
     - American Graffiti
    American Graffiti
    American Graffiti is a 1973 coming of age film co-written/directed by George Lucas starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips and Harrison Ford...
    
    
  • Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
    
     - Serpico

• 1974: Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
  
   - The Godfather Part II
  The Godfather Part II
  The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script co-written with Mario Puzo. The film is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, chronicling the story of the Corleone family following the events of the first film while also depicting the...
  
  
  • Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
    
     - The Conversation
    The Conversation
    The Conversation is a 1974 American psychological thriller film written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman...
    
    
  • Bob Fosse
    Bob Fosse
    Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...
    
     - Lenny
    Lenny (film)
    Lenny is a 1974 American biographical film about the comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by Bob Fosse. The screenplay by Julian Barry is based on his play of the same name.-Plot:...
    
    
  • Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
    
     - Murder on the Orient Express
    Murder on the Orient Express (1974 film)
    Murder on the Orient Express is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, and based on the1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.-Overview:...
    
    
  • Roman Polanski
    Roman Polanski
    Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
    
     - Chinatown

• 1975: Miloš Forman
  Miloš Forman
  Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
  
   - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)
  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....
  
  
  • Robert Altman
    Robert Altman
    Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
    
     - Nashville
  • Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
    
     - Barry Lyndon
    Barry Lyndon
    Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period romantic war film produced, written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer...
    
    
  • Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
    
      - Dog Day Afternoon
    Dog Day Afternoon
    Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Frank Pierson, and produced by Martin Bregman. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Penny Allen, James Broderick, and Carol Kane. The title refers to the "dog days of summer".The film was...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     - Jaws
    Jaws (film)
    Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
    
    

• 1976: John G. Avildsen
  John G. Avildsen
  John Guilbert Avildsen is an American film director.-Life and career:Avildsen was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Ivy and Clarence John Avildsen...
  
   - Rocky
  Rocky
  Rocky is a 1976 American sports drama film directed by John G. Avildsen and both written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It tells the rags to riches American Dream story of Rocky Balboa, an uneducated but kind-hearted debt collector for a loan shark in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
  
  
  • Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet
    Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
    
     - Network
    Network (film)
    Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
    
    
  • Alan J. Pakula
    Alan J. Pakula
    Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.-Career:...
    
     - All the President's Men
    All the President's Men (film)
    All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post...
    
    
  • Martin Scorsese
    Martin Scorsese
    Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
    
     - Taxi Driver
    Taxi Driver
    Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
    
    
  • Lina Wertmüller
    Lina Wertmüller
    Lina Wertmüller is an Italian film writer and director of aristocratic Swiss descent. In 1976, she became the first woman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing with the film Seven Beauties.-Biography:...
    
     - Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze)
    Seven Beauties
    Pasqualino Settebellezze is a 1975 Italian language film written and directed by Lina Wertmüller and starring Giancarlo Giannini in the main role. Fernando Rey and Shirley Stoler are also featured...
    
    

• 1977: Woody Allen
  Woody Allen
  Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
  
   - Annie Hall
  Annie Hall
  Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
  
  
  • George Lucas
    George Lucas
    George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
    
     - Star Wars
    Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
    Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
    
    
  • Herbert Ross
    Herbert Ross
    Herbert Ross was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.-Early life and career:Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942...
    
     - The Turning Point
    The Turning Point (1977 film)
    The Turning Point is a 1977 film written by Arthur Laurents and directed by Herbert Ross. In starring roles were Shirley MacLaine, Anne Bancroft, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leslie Browne, Tom Skerritt, Martha Scott, Anthony Zerbe, Marshall Thompson and James Mitchell.-Plot:This film tells the story of...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
    Close Encounters of the Third Kind
    Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey...
    
    
  • Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann
    Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
    
     - Julia

• 1978: Michael Cimino
  Michael Cimino
  Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
  
   - The Deer Hunter
  The Deer Hunter
  The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
  
  
  • Hal Ashby
    Hal Ashby
    Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
    
     - Coming Home
  • Warren Beatty
    Warren Beatty
    Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
    
     and Buck Henry
    Buck Henry
    Henry Zuckerman, better known as Buck Henry , is an American actor, writer, film director, and television director.-Early life:...
    
     - Heaven Can Wait
    Heaven Can Wait (1978 film)
    Heaven Can Wait is a 1978 American comedy film directed by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry. It is the second film adaptation of Harry Segall's stageplay of the same name, preceded by Here Comes Mr. Jordan and followed by Down to Earth...
    
    
  • Paul Mazursky
    Paul Mazursky
    Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
    
     - An Unmarried Woman
    An Unmarried Woman
    An Unmarried Woman is a 1978 American comedy-drama film that tells the story of the wealthy New York wife Erica Benton whose “perfect” life is shattered when her stockbroker husband Martin leaves her for a younger woman. The film documents Erica's attempts at being single again, where she suffers...
    
    
  • Alan Parker
    Alan Parker
    Sir Alan William Parker, CBE is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.-Life and career:...
    
     - Midnight Express
    Midnight Express (film)
    Released on October 6, 1978, the soundtrack to Midnight Express was composed by Italian synth-pioneer Giorgio Moroder. The score won the Academy Award for Best Original Score of 1978.Side A:#Chase – Giorgio Moroder...
    
    

• 1979: Robert Benton
  Robert Benton
  Robert Douglas Benton is an American screenwriter and film director.Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee. He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University. Benton has won numerous awards for both writing and...
  
   - Kramer vs. Kramer
  Kramer vs. Kramer
  Kramer vs. Kramer is a 1979 American drama film adapted by Robert Benton from the novel by Avery Corman, and directed by Benton. The film tells the story of a married couple's divorce and its impact on everyone involved, including the couple's young son...
  
  
  • Woody Allen
    Woody Allen
    Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
    
     - Manhattan
    Manhattan (film)
    Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
    
    
  • James Bridges
    James Bridges
    James Bridges was an American screenwriter and film director.Bridges was born in Paris, Arkansas. He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one of his episodes, "An Unlocked Window", earned him a 1966 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Episode in a TV...
    
     - The China Syndrome
    The China Syndrome
    The China Syndrome is a 1979 American thriller film that tells the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley.The film was...
    
    
  • Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
    
     - Apocalypse Now
    Apocalypse Now
    Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
    
    
  • Peter Yates
    Peter Yates
    Peter James Yates was an English director and producer. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire.The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager...
    
     - Breaking Away
    Breaking Away
    Breaking Away is a 1979 American film. A coming of age story, it follows a group of four male teenagers in Bloomington, Indiana, who have recently graduated from high school. It stars Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern , Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie and Paul Dooley...
    
    

1980s

• 1980: Robert Redford
  Robert Redford
  Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
  
   - Ordinary People
  Ordinary People
  Ordinary People is a 1980 American drama film that marked the directorial debut of Robert Redford. It stars Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton....
  
  
  • Michael Apted
    Michael Apted
    Michael David Apted, CMG is an English director, producer, writer and actor. He is one of the most prolific British film directors of his generation but is best known for his work on the Up Series of documentaries and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.On 29 June 2003 he was elected...
    
     - Coal Miner's Daughter
    Coal Miner's Daughter
    Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 American biographical film which tells the story of country music icon Loretta Lynn. It stars Sissy Spacek in her Academy Award for Best Actress winning role, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm, and was directed by Michael Apted.-Background:The film was...
    
    
  • David Lynch
    David Lynch
    David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
    
     - The Elephant Man
    The Elephant Man (film)
    The Elephant Man is a 1980 American drama film based on the true story of Joseph Merrick , a severely deformed man in 19th century London...
    
    
  • Richard Rush
    Richard Rush (director)
    Richard Rush is an American movie director, scriptwriter, and producer. He is best known for the Oscar-nominated The Stunt Man. His other works, however, have been less celebrated. The next best-known of his movies is Color of Night — also nominated, but in this case for the Golden Raspberry Award...
    
     - The Stunt Man
    The Stunt Man
    The Stunt Man is a 1980 American film directed by Richard Rush, starring Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, and Barbara Hershey. The movie was adapted by Lawrence B. Marcus and Rush from the novel by Paul Brodeur...
    
    
  • Martin Scorsese
    Martin Scorsese
    Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
    
     - Raging Bull

• 1981: Warren Beatty
  Warren Beatty
  Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
  
   - Reds
  • Hugh Hudson
    Hugh Hudson
    Hugh Hudson is an English film director. His best-known international success is the 1981 multiple Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.- Early life :...
    
     - Chariots of Fire
    Chariots of Fire
    Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British film. It tells the fact-based story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice....
    
    
  • Louis Malle
    Louis Malle
    Louis Malle was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. His films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud , Atlantic City , and Au revoir, les enfants .- Early years in France :Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries,...
    
     - Atlantic City
  • Mark Rydell
    Mark Rydell
    Mark Rydell is an American actor, film director and producer.-Career:Rydell's initial training was in music. As a youth, he wanted to be a conductor. He began his career as an actor and first became known for his role as Walt Johnson on The Edge of Night and as Jeff Baker on As the World Turns,...
    
     - On Golden Pond
    On Golden Pond (1981 film)
    On Golden Pond is a 1981 American drama film directed by Mark Rydell. The screenplay by Ernest Thompson was adapted from his 1979 play of the same title. Henry Fonda won the Academy Award in what was his final film role. Co-star Katharine Hepburn also received an Oscar, as did Thompson for his...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     - Raiders of the Lost Ark
    Raiders of the Lost Ark
    Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
    
    

• 1982: Richard Attenborough
  Richard Attenborough
  Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
  
   - Gandhi
  Gandhi (film)
  Gandhi is a 1982 biographical film based on the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century. The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. They both...
  
  
  • Taylor Hackford
    Taylor Hackford
    Taylor Edwin Hackford is an American film director, and the current president of the Directors Guild of America.-Early life:Hackford was born in Santa Barbara, California, the son of Mary , a waitress, and Joseph Hackford...
    
     - An Officer and a Gentleman
    An Officer and a Gentleman
    A Officer and a Gentleman is a 1982 American drama film that tells the story of a U.S. Navy aviation officer candidate who comes into conflict with the Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant who trains him. It was written by Douglas Day Stewart and directed by Taylor Hackford...
    
    
  • Wolfgang Petersen
    Wolfgang Petersen
    Wolfgang Petersen is a German film director and screenwriter. His films include The NeverEnding Story, Enemy Mine, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy, and Poseidon...
    
     - The Boat (Das Boot)
    Das Boot
    Das Boot is a 1981 German epic war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann...
    
    
  • Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Irwin Pollack was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he later taught acting...
    
     - Tootsie
    Tootsie
    Tootsie is a 1982 American comedy film that tells the story of a talented but volatile actor whose reputation for being difficult forces him to go to extreme lengths to land a job. The movie stars Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange, with a supporting cast that includes Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman,...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
    E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
    E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
    
    

• 1983: James L. Brooks
  James L. Brooks
  James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...
  
   - Terms of Endearment
  Terms of Endearment
  Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry and starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, and Jack Nicholson...
  
  
  • Bruce Beresford
    Bruce Beresford
    Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 40-year career.-Early life:...
    
     - Tender Mercies
    Tender Mercies
    Tender Mercies is a 1983 American drama film directed by Bruce Beresford. The screenplay by Horton Foote focuses on Mac Sledge, a recovering alcoholic country music singer who seeks to turn his life around through his relationship with a young widow and her son in rural Texas...
    
    
  • Ingmar Bergman
    Ingmar Bergman
    Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
    
     - Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander)
    Fanny and Alexander
    Fanny and Alexander is a 1982 Swedish fantasy drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. It was originally conceived as a four-part TV movie and cut in that version, spanning 312 minutes. A 188-minute version was created later for cinematic release, although this version was in fact the...
    
    
  • Lawrence Kasdan
    Lawrence Kasdan
    Lawrence Edward "Larry" Kasdan is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.-Life and career:Kasdan was born in Miami, Florida, the son of Sylvia Sarah , an employment counselor, and Clarence Norman Kasdan, who managed retail electronics stores.His Brother is the writer/producer Mark...
    
     - The Big Chill
    The Big Chill (film)
    The Big Chill is a 1983 American comedy-drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. It is about a group of baby boomer college friends who reunite briefly after 15 years due to...
    
    
  • Philip Kaufman
    Philip Kaufman
    Philip Kaufman is an American film director and screenwriter. His movies have adapted novels of widely different types – from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun; from Tom Wolfe’s heroic epic The Right Stuff to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin’s...
    
     - The Right Stuff

• 1984: Miloš Forman
  Miloš Forman
  Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
  
   - Amadeus
  Amadeus (film)
  Amadeus is a 1984 period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and written by Peter Shaffer. Adapted from Shaffer's stage play Amadeus, the story is based loosely on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, two composers who lived in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the...
  
  
  • Robert Benton
    Robert Benton
    Robert Douglas Benton is an American screenwriter and film director.Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee. He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University. Benton has won numerous awards for both writing and...
    
     - Places in the Heart
    Places in the Heart
    Places in the Heart is a 1984 drama film that tells the story of a Texas widow who tries to keep her farm together with the help of a blind white man and an African-American man during the Great Depression...
    
    
  • Norman Jewison
    Norman Jewison
    Norman Frederick Jewison, CC, O.Ont is a Canadian film director, producer, actor and founder of the Canadian Film Centre. Highlights of his directing career include In the Heat of the Night , The Thomas Crown Affair , Fiddler on the Roof , Jesus Christ Superstar , Moonstruck , The Hurricane and The...
    
     - A Soldier's Story
    A Soldier's Story
    A Soldier's Story is a 1984 drama film directed by Norman Jewison, based upon Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning Off Broadway production A Soldier's Play. A black officer is sent to investigate the murder of a black sergeant in Louisiana near the end of World War II...
    
    
  • Roland Joffé
    Roland Joffé
    Roland Joffé is an English-French film director who is known for his Oscar nominated movies, The Killing Fields and The Mission. He began his career in television. His early television credits included episodes of Coronation Street and an adaptation of The Stars Look Down for Granada...
    
     - The Killing Fields
    The Killing Fields (film)
    The Killing Fields is a 1984 British drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. The film, which won three Academy Awards, was directed by Roland Joffé and stars Sam Waterston as...
    
    
  • David Lean
    David Lean
    Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
    
     - A Passage to India
    A Passage to India (film)
    A Passage to India is a 1984 drama film written and directed by David Lean. The screenplay is based on the 1924 novel of the same title by E. M. Forster and the 1960 play by Santha Rama Rau that was inspired by the novel....
    
    

• 1985: Steven Spielberg
  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
  
   - The Color Purple
  The Color Purple (film)
  The Color Purple is a 1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker. It was Spielberg's eighth film as a director , and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which he had become famous...
  
  (not an Oscar nominee)
  • Ron Howard
    Ron Howard
    Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
    
     - Cocoon
    Cocoon (film)
    The score for Cocoon was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released twice, through Polydor Records in 1985 and a reprint through P.E.G. in 1997 and features eleven tracks of score and a vocal track performed by Michael Sembello...
    
    
  • John Huston
    John Huston
    John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
    
     - Prizzi's Honor
    Prizzi's Honor
    Prizzi's Honor is a 1985 American black comedy film directed by John Huston. It stars Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner, Robert Loggia and Anjelica Huston.The film was adapted by Richard Condon and Janet Roach from Condon's novel of the same name...
    
    
  • Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Pollack
    Sydney Irwin Pollack was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he later taught acting...
    
     - Out of Africa
  • Peter Weir
    Peter Weir
    Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
    
     - Witness
    Witness (1985 film)
    Witness is a 1985 American thriller film directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. The screenplay by William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, and Earl W...
    
    

• 1986: Oliver Stone
  Oliver Stone
  William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
  
   - Platoon
  Platoon (film)
  Platoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone and stars Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen. It is the first of Stone's Vietnam War trilogy, followed by 1989's Born on the Fourth of July and 1993's Heaven & Earth....
  
  
  • Woody Allen
    Woody Allen
    Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
    
     - Hannah and Her Sisters
    Hannah and Her Sisters
    Hannah and Her Sisters is a 1986 American comedy-drama film which tells the intertwined stories of an extended family over two years that begin and end with a family Thanksgiving dinner...
    
    
  • Randa Haines
    Randa Haines
    Randa Haines is a film and television director and producer. She is perhaps most famous for directing the critically acclaimed feature film Children of a Lesser God , which starred William Hurt and Marlee Matlin, for which Matlin won the 1987 Academy Award as best actress...
    
     - Children of a Lesser God
    Children of a Lesser God
    Children of a Lesser God is a 1986 American romantic drama film directed by Randa Haines and written by Hesper Anderson and Mark Medoff. An adaptation of Medoff's Tony Award-winning stage play of the same name, the film stars William Hurt and Marlee Matlin as two employees at a school for the deaf:...
    
    
  • James Ivory
    James Ivory (director)
    James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
    
     - A Room with a View
    A Room with a View (film)
    A Room with a View is a 1985 British drama film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. The film is a close adaptation of E. M...
    
    
  • Rob Reiner
    Rob Reiner
    Robert "Rob" Reiner is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s...
    
     - Stand by Me
    Stand by Me (film)
    Stand by Me is a 1986 American drama film directed by Rob Reiner. Based on the novella The Body by Stephen King, the film takes its title from the Ben E. King song of the same name, which plays over the end credits.-Plot:...
    
    

• 1987: Bernardo Bertolucci
  Bernardo Bertolucci
  Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...
  
   - The Last Emperor
  The Last Emperor
  The Last Emperor is a 1987 biopic about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, whose autobiography was the basis for the screenplay written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci. Independently produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was directed by Bertolucci and released in 1987 by Columbia Pictures...
  
  
  • James L. Brooks
    James L. Brooks
    James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...
    
     - Broadcast News
    Broadcast News (film)
    Broadcast News is a 1987 romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks. The film concerns a virtuoso television news producer , who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter and his charismatic but far less seasoned rival...
    
    
  • Lasse Hallström
    Lasse Hallström
    Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström is a Swedish film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog and later for The Cider House Rules .-Life and career:...
    
     - My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund)
    My Life as a Dog
    My Life as a Dog is a 1985 Swedish drama film directed by Lasse Hallström, based on a novel by Reidar Jönsson. It tells the story of Ingemar, a young boy sent to live with relatives...
    
    
  • Adrian Lyne
    Adrian Lyne
    Adrian Lyne is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for directing films that focus on sexually charged characters and often uses natural light, a fog machine and other effects to create eroticized atmospheres...
    
     - Fatal Attraction
    Fatal Attraction
    Fatal Attraction is a 1987 American thriller blended with horror, directed by Adrian Lyne and stars Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer. The film centers around a married man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end, resulting in emotional blackmail, stalking...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     - Empire of the Sun
    Empire of the Sun (film)
    Empire of the Sun is a 1987 American coming of age war film based on J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Steven Spielberg directed the film, which stars Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, and Nigel Havers...
    
    

• 1988: Barry Levinson
  Barry Levinson
  Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers and Rain Man.-Early life:...
  
   - Rain Man
  Rain Man
  Rain Man is a 1988 drama film written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass and directed by Barry Levinson. It tells the story of an abrasive and selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son,...
  
  
  • Charles Crichton
    Charles Crichton
    Charles Crichton was an English film director and film editor. He became best known for directing comedies produced at Ealing Studios...
    
     - A Fish Called Wanda
    A Fish Called Wanda
    A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 crime-comedy film written by John Cleese and Charles Crichton. It was directed by Crichton and an uncredited Cleese, and stars Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. The film is about a jewel heist and its aftermath...
    
    
  • Mike Nichols
    Mike Nichols
    Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
    
     - Working Girl
    Working Girl
    Working Girl is a 1988 romantic comedy film written by Kevin Wade and directed by Mike Nichols. It tells the inspiring story of a Staten Island-raised secretary, Tess McGill , working in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street investment bank...
    
    
  • Alan Parker
    Alan Parker
    Sir Alan William Parker, CBE is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.-Life and career:...
    
     - Mississippi Burning
    Mississippi Burning
    Mississippi Burning is a 1988 American crime drama film loosely based on the FBI investigation into the real-life murders of three civil rights workers in the U.S. state of Mississippi in 1964. The film focuses on two fictional FBI agents who investigate the murders...
    
    
  • Robert Zemeckis
    Robert Zemeckis
    Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
    
     - Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
    
    

• 1989: Oliver Stone
  Oliver Stone
  William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
  
   - Born on the Fourth of July
  Born on the Fourth of July (film)
  Born on the Fourth of July is a 1989 American film adaptation of the best selling autobiography of the same name by Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic. Tom Cruise plays Kovic, in a performance that earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Oliver Stone co-wrote the screenplay with Kovic, and also...
  
  
  • Woody Allen
    Woody Allen
    Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
    
     - Crimes and Misdemeanors
    Crimes and Misdemeanors
    Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 black comedy written, directed by and co-starring Woody Allen, alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston and Joanna Gleason....
    
    
  • Rob Reiner
    Rob Reiner
    Robert "Rob" Reiner is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s...
    
     - When Harry Met Sally...
    When Harry Met Sally...
    When Harry Met Sally... is a 1989 American romantic comedy film written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The story follows the title characters from the time they meet just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years or...
    
    
  • Phil Alden Robinson
    Phil Alden Robinson
    Phil Alden Robinson is an American film director and screenwriter whose films include Field of Dreams, Sneakers and The Sum of All Fears.-Life and career:...
    
     - Field of Dreams
    Field of Dreams
    Field of Dreams is a 1989 American fantasy-drama film directed by Phil Alden Robinson and is from the novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella...
    
    
  • Peter Weir
    Peter Weir
    Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
    
     - Dead Poets Society
    Dead Poets Society
    Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Robin Williams. Set at the conservative and aristocratic Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry.The script was written...
    
    

1990s

• 1990: Kevin Costner
  Kevin Costner
  Kevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
  
   – Dances with Wolves
  Dances with Wolves
  Dances with Wolves is a 1990 epic western film directed by and starring Kevin Costner. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake and tells the story of a Union Army Lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and his dealings with a...
  
  
  • Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola
    Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
    
     – The Godfather Part III
    The Godfather Part III
    The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American gangster film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire...
    
    
  • Barry Levinson
    Barry Levinson
    Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers and Rain Man.-Early life:...
    
     – Avalon
    Avalon (1990 film)
    Avalon is a feature film directed by Barry Levinson. It is a mostly autobiographical story of a family of Polish-Jewish immigrants to the United States who settle in Baltimore, Maryland, at the beginning of the 20th century. The movie follows the family as they grow, become more prosperous, and...
    
    
  • Martin Scorsese
    Martin Scorsese
    Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
    
     – Goodfellas
    Goodfellas
    Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
    
    
  • Giuseppe Tornatore
    Giuseppe Tornatore
    -Life and career:Born in Bagheria near Palermo, Tornatore developed an interest in acting and the theatre from at least the age of 16 and put on works by Luigi Pirandello and Eduardo De Filippo.He worked initially as a freelance photographer...
    
     – Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo cinema Paradiso)

• 1991: Jonathan Demme
  Jonathan Demme
  Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
  
   – The Silence of the Lambs
  • Barry Levinson
    Barry Levinson
    Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers and Rain Man.-Early life:...
    
     – Bugsy
    Bugsy
    Bugsy is a 1991 American crime-drama film which tells the story of mobster Bugsy Siegel. It stars Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould, Joe Mantegna, Bebe Neuwirth, and Bill Graham....
    
    
  • Ridley Scott
    Ridley Scott
    Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
    
     – Thelma & Louise
  • Oliver Stone
    Oliver Stone
    William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
    
     – JFK
    JFK (film)
    JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...
    
    
  • Barbra Streisand
    Barbra Streisand
    Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
    
     – The Prince of Tides
    The Prince of Tides
    The Prince of Tides is a 1991 romantic drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Pat Conroy; the film stars Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. It tells the story of the narrator's struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina...
    
    

• 1992: Clint Eastwood
  Clint Eastwood
  Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
  
   – Unforgiven
  Unforgiven
  Unforgiven is a 1992 American Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood with a screenplay written by David Webb Peoples. The film tells the story of William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had hung up his guns and turned to farming...
  
  
  • Robert Altman
    Robert Altman
    Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
    
     – The Player
    The Player
    The Player is a 1992 American satirical film directed by Robert Altman from a screenplay by Michael Tolkin based on his own 1988 novel of the same name....
    
    
  • James Ivory
    James Ivory (director)
    James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
    
     – Howards End
    Howards End (film)
    Howards End is a 1992 film based upon the novel of the same title by E. M. Forster , a story of class relations in turn-of-the-20th-century England...
    
    
  • Neil Jordan
    Neil Jordan
    Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...
    
     – The Crying Game
    The Crying Game
    The Crying Game is a 1992 psychological thriller drama film written and directed by Neil Jordan. The film explores themes of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles...
    
    
  • Rob Reiner
    Rob Reiner
    Robert "Rob" Reiner is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s...
    
     – A Few Good Men
    A Few Good Men (film)
    A Few Good Men is a 1992 drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name. A courtroom drama, the film revolves around the trial of two U.S...
    
    

• 1993: Steven Spielberg
  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
  
   – Schindler's List
  Schindler's List
  Schindler's List is a 1993 American film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the novel Schindler's Ark...
  
  
  • Jane Campion
    Jane Campion
    Jane Campion is a filmmaker and screenwriter. She is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors, although most of her work has been made in or financed by other countries, principally Australia – where she now lives – and the United States...
    
     – The Piano
    The Piano
    The Piano is a 1993 New Zealand drama film about a mute pianist and her daughter, set during the mid-19th century in a rainy, muddy frontier backwater on the west coast of New Zealand. The film was written and directed by Jane Campion, and stars Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna Paquin...
    
    
  • Andrew Davis
    Andrew Davis (film director)
    Andrew Davis is an American film director, producer and cinematographer, noted for the action films Code of Silence, The Fugitive, Chain Reaction, Collateral Damage, Above the Law, The Guardian and Under Siege.-Biography:Born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Davis has directed several films...
    
     – The Fugitive
    The Fugitive (1993 film)
    The Fugitive is a 1993 American thriller film based on the television series of the same name. The film was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The film was one of the few movies associated with a television series to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
    
    
  • James Ivory
    James Ivory (director)
    James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
    
     – The Remains of the Day
    The Remains of the Day (film)
    The Remains of the Day is a 1993 Merchant Ivory film adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols and John Calley. It starred Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton with James Fox,...
    
    
  • Martin Scorsese
    Martin Scorsese
    Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
    
     – The Age of Innocence
    The Age of Innocence (film)
    The Age of Innocence is a 1993 American film adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name. The film was released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Martin Scorsese, and stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder....
    
    

• 1994: Robert Zemeckis
  Robert Zemeckis
  Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
  
   – Forrest Gump
  Forrest Gump
  Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
  
  
  • Frank Darabont
    Frank Darabont
    Frank Darabont is a Hungarian-American film director, screenwriter and producer who has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. He has directed the films The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, all based on stories by Stephen King...
    
     – The Shawshank Redemption
  • Mike Newell
    Mike Newell (director)
    Michael Cormac "Mike" Newell is an English director and producer of motion pictures for the screen and for television. After the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005, Newell became the third most commercially successful British director in recent years, behind Christopher Nolan...
    
     – Four Weddings and a Funeral
    Four Weddings and a Funeral
    Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 British comedy film directed by Mike Newell. It was the first of several films by screenwriter Richard Curtis to feature Hugh Grant...
    
    
  • Robert Redford
    Robert Redford
    Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
    
     – Quiz Show
  • Quentin Tarantino
    Quentin Tarantino
    Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
    
     – Pulp Fiction
    Pulp Fiction (film)
    Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
    
    

• 1995: Ron Howard
  Ron Howard
  Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
  
   – Apollo 13
  Apollo 13 (film)
  Apollo 13 is a 1995 American drama film directed by Ron Howard. The film stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr...
  
  (not an Oscar nominee)
  • Mike Figgis
    Mike Figgis
    Michael "Mike" Figgis is an English film director, writer, and composer.-Personal life:Figgis was born in Carlisle, England and grew up in Africa. Figgis for several years had a relationship with the actress Saffron Burrows and cast her in several films...
    
     – Leaving Las Vegas
    Leaving Las Vegas
    Leaving Las Vegas is a 1995 romantic drama film directed and written by Mike Figgis, based on a semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by John O'Brien. Nicolas Cage stars as a suicidal alcoholic who has ended his personal and professional life to drink himself to death in Las Vegas...
    
    
  • Mel Gibson
    Mel Gibson
    Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...
    
     – Braveheart
    Braveheart
    Braveheart is a 1995 epic historical drama war film directed by and starring Mel Gibson. The film was written for the screen and then novelized by Randall Wallace...
    
    
  • Ang Lee
    Ang Lee
    Ang Lee is a Taiwanese film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman , Sense and Sensibility , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , Hulk , and Brokeback Mountain , for which he won an Academy...
    
     – Sense and Sensibility
  • Michael Radford
    Michael Radford
    Michael Radford is an English film director and screenwriter.-Early life and career:Radford was born on 24 February 1946, in New Delhi, India, to a British father and an Austrian Jewish mother. He was educated at Bedford School before attending Worcester College, Oxford...
    
     – The Postman (Il postino)
    Il Postino
    Il Postino is a 1994 Italian film directed by Michael Radford. The film was originally released in the U.S. as The Postman, a straight translation of the Italian title...
    
    

• 1996: Anthony Minghella
  Anthony Minghella
  Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....
  
   – The English Patient
  The English Patient (film)
  The English Patient is a 1996 romantic drama film based on the novel of the same name by Sri Lankan-Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje. The film, written for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture...
  
  
  • Joel Coen – Fargo
    Fargo (film)
    Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy-crime film produced, directed and written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of homicides, William H...
    
    
  • Cameron Crowe
    Cameron Crowe
    Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
    
     – Jerry Maguire
    Jerry Maguire
    Jerry Maguire is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding, Jr. It was written, co-produced, and directed by Cameron Crowe...
    
    
  • Scott Hicks
    Scott Hicks
    Robert Scott Hicks is a film director from Australia. He is best known as the screenwriter and director of Shine, the Oscar-winning biopic of pianist David Helfgott. Hicks's work has been nominated for an Academy Award as well as winning an Emmy Award.-Personal life:Hicks was born in Uganda, the...
    
     – Shine
    Shine (film)
    Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris...
    
    
  • Mike Leigh
    Mike Leigh
    Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...
    
     – Secrets & Lies

• 1997: James Cameron
  James Cameron
  James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
  
   – Titanic
  Titanic (1997 film)
  Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
  
  
  • James L. Brooks
    James L. Brooks
    James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...
    
     – As Good as It Gets
    As Good as It Gets
    As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with an asthmatic son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was...
    
    
  • Curtis Hanson
    Curtis Hanson
    Curtis Lee Hanson is an American film director, film producer and screenwriter. His directing work includes The Hand That Rocks the Cradle , L.A...
    
     – L.A. Confidential
    L.A. Confidential (film)
    L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American film based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, the third book in his L.A. Quartet. Both the book and the film tell the story of a group of LAPD officers in the 1950s, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity...
    
    
  • Steven Spielberg
    Steven Spielberg
    Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
    
     – Amistad
  • Gus Van Sant
    Gus Van Sant
    Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
    
     – Good Will Hunting
    Good Will Hunting
    Good Will Hunting is a 1997 drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, and Stellan Skarsgård...
    
    

• 1998: Steven Spielberg
  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
  
   – Saving Private Ryan
  Saving Private Ryan
  Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American war film set during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Robert Rodat. The film is notable for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which depicts the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944....
  
  
  • Roberto Benigni
    Roberto Benigni
    Roberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television.- Early years :...
    
     – Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella)
    Life Is Beautiful
    Life Is Beautiful is a 1997 Italian film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice , who must employ his fertile imagination to help his family during their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.At the 71st Academy Awards in 1999, Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor and...
    
    
  • John Madden
    John Madden (director)
    John Philip Madden is an English director of theatre, film, television, and radio.- Biography :Madden was educated at Clifton College. He was in the same house as friend and fellow director Roger Michell. He began his career in British independent films, and graduated from the University of...
    
     – Shakespeare in Love
    Shakespeare in Love
    Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
    
    
  • Terrence Malick
    Terrence Malick
    Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
    
     – The Thin Red Line
    The Thin Red Line (1998 film)
    The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American war film which tells a fictional story of United States forces during the Battle of Mount Austen in World War II. It portrays men in: C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division; in particular those soldiers played by Sean Penn, Jim...
    
    
  • Peter Weir
    Peter Weir
    Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
    
     – The Truman Show
    The Truman Show
    The Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The cast includes Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, as well as Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone...
    
    

• 1999: Sam Mendes
  Sam Mendes
  Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...
  
   – American Beauty
  • Frank Darabont
    Frank Darabont
    Frank Darabont is a Hungarian-American film director, screenwriter and producer who has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. He has directed the films The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, all based on stories by Stephen King...
    
     – The Green Mile
    The Green Mile (film)
    The Green Mile is a 1999 American drama film directed by Frank Darabont and adapted by him from the 1996 Stephen King novel of the same name...
    
    
  • Spike Jonze
    Spike Jonze
    Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
    
     – Being John Malkovich
    Being John Malkovich
    Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself...
    
    
  • Michael Mann – The Insider
    The Insider (film)
    The Insider is a 1999 film based on the true story of a 60 Minutes television series segment, as seen through the eyes of a real tobacco executive, Jeffrey Wigand. The 60 Minutes story originally aired in November 1995 in an altered form because of objections by CBS’ then-owner, Laurence Tisch, who...
    
    
  • M. Night Shyamalan
    M. Night Shyamalan
    Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan,known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-born American screenwriter, film director, and producer known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that climax with a twist ending. He is also known for filming his movies in and around...
    
     – The Sixth Sense
    The Sixth Sense
    The Sixth Sense is a 1999 American psychological thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film tells the story of Cole Sear , a troubled, isolated boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist who tries to help him...
    
    

2000s

2010s