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BAFTA Award for Best Direction
Winners of the BAFTA Award for Best Direction presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
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David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epics such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter, and A...
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Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann (April 29, 1907–March 14, 1997) was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed movies like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.
Zinnemann was born to a Jewish family in Vienna,...
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Carol Reed
Sir Carol Reed (30 December 1906 – 25 April 1976) was an English film director, most famous for directing The Third Man, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Oliver!. He won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Director for Oliver!.
The son of actor-producer...
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Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet (pronounced [luˈmɛt], loo-MET; born June 25, 1924) is an American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982), all of...
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John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE (16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director.
Schlesinger was born in London into a middle class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta (née Regensburg) and Bernard Edward Schlesinger,...
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Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was an Indian-born English feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for...
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Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli (b. 12 February 1923) is a celebrated Italian director of films and operas. He has also been a noted opera designer and producer of operas, theatre, film and television, as well as a politician.
Internationally, he is well known...
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (2 November 1906 - 17 March 1976) was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director and writer, best known for films such as The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice (1971). He died in Rome of a...
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George Roy Hill
George Roy Hill (December 20, 1921 – December 27, 2002) 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....
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Costa Gavras
Constantinos Gavras (born 13 February 1933), better known as Costa-Gavras (Κώστας Γαβράς), is a Greek born French filmmaker, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z (1969). Most of his movies were...
Ken Loach
Kenneth Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English film and television director.
He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as...
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Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell, known as Ken Russell (born 3 July 1927), is an English film director. He is known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his controversial style. He has been criticized as being overly obsessed with...
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Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American director, writer, producer, and photographer of films, who lived in England during most of the last 40 years of his career. Kubrick was noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose...
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Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (born July 30, 1939) 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 DePalma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese,...
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey (January 14, 1909, La Crosse, Wisconsin – June 22, 1984, London) was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to...
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Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish pronunciation: [lwis buˈɲwel]) (22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-born filmmaker who acquired Mexican citizenship and worked in Mexico, France, and also in his native Spain and the United States. He is...
John Boorman
John Boorman (born 18 January 1933) is an English filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope and Glory, The General and Zardoz.
Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...
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Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci (born March 16, 1940) is an Italian film director and screenwriter, probably best known for such films as The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers.
Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma,...
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Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, BSC (born 15 August 1928 in London) is an English film director and cinematographer. Contributing to the visual look of Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death, and co-directing Performance, he would...
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William Friedkin
William Friedkin (born 29 August 1935) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1972, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director. The following year he was nominated for his...
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François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ʀɔlɑ̃ tʁyfo]; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was an influential filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains...
Bob Fosse
Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse (June 23, 1927 – September 23, 1987) was an American musical theater choreographer and director, screenwriter and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction. He...
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Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director 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...
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Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (born 14 August 1945) is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.
Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine (1963...
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John G. Avildsen
John Guilbert Avildsen (born December 21, 1935) is an American film director.
His films include Guess What We Learned in School Today? (1970), Cry Uncle! (1970), Joe (1970), Save the Tiger (1973), Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984), Lean on Me ...
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Alan J. Pakula
Alan Jay Pakula (April 7, 1928 – November 19, 1998) was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.
Pakula started his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at...
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Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. In a career spanning over four decades, Spielberg's films have touched on many themes and genres. Spielberg's early sci-fi and...
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Woody Allen
Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, comedian, writer, musician, and playwright.
Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have...
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Alan Parker
Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British film industry and Hollywood and was a founding member of the Director's Guild of Great Britain....
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Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino (pronounced [ˈtʃamɪnəʊ], born 3 February 1939, New York City) is an American film director. He is often cited as an example of the meteoric rises and falls seen in Hollywood in the 1970s.
Michael Cimino was born in New York City, New...
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Peter Yates
Peter Yates (born 24 July 1929 in Aldershot, Hampshire) is an English film director and producer.
He went to Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage...
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David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker and visual artist. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). He also...
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Martin Scorsese
Martin Marcantonio Luciano Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is the founder of the World Cinema Foundation, a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his...
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Roman Polański
Roman Raymond Polanski (Polish: Roman Rajmund Polański; born 18 August 1933) is a French-born and resident Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Polanski began his career in Poland, and later became a critically acclaimed director of...
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Claude Berri
Claude Berri (1 July 1934 – 12 January 2009), born Claude Berel Langmann, was one of the great all-rounders of French cinema: an actor, writer, producer, director and distributor. "Out of my failure as an actor was born my desire to direct. Then my...
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Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz (21 July 1926 – 25 November 2002) was a significant filmmaker active in post–war Britain.
Reisz was a Jewish refugee, one of the 669 rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton. After attending Leighton Park School, he joined the Royal Air Force...
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Louis Malle
Louis Malle (30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. His films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Atlantic City (1981), and Au revoir, les...
Hugh Hudson
Hugh Hudson (born 25 August 1936) is a British film director. His best-known international success is the 1981 multiple Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.
Hudson was born in London, the only son of Jacynth Ellerton, the second wife of...
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Mark Rydell
Mark Rydell (born March 23, 1934 in New York City) is an American actor, film director and producer.
Rydell 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...
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Richard Attenborough
Lord Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE (born 29 August 1923) is an English actor, director, producer, and entrepreneur. Attenborough has won two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes. He is the elder brother of...
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Sydney Pollack
Sydney Irwin Pollack (July 1, 1934 — May 26, 2008) was an American film director, producer and actor. Born in Lafayette, Indiana to Russian Jewish immigrants, Pollack studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where...
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born 6 November 1931) is an American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer. Nichols is one of only twelve people to have won all the major American entertainment awards: an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award....
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Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford (born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director, writer, and producer of such films as Breaker Morant, Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy.
Born in Sydney to Leslie and Lona Beresford, he grew up in the (then) outer western...
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Bill Forsyth
Bill Forsyth (born 29 July 1946, Glasgow) is a British film director and writer, noted for his commitment to national film-making.
Forsyth first came to attention with a low-budget film, That Sinking Feeling, made with youth theatre actors and...
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Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrdʒo lɛˈoːne]; January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was a legendary Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.
Leone's film making style includes...
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Roland Joffé
Roland Joffé (born November 17, 1945) is a British 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...
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Robert Benton
Robert Douglas Benton (born September 29, 1932) is an American screenwriter and film director.
Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, the son of Dorothy (née Spaulding) and Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee. He attended the...
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明, Kurosawa Akira, 23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a career that spanned 50 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films. He is widely regarded as one of the most...
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Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir AM (born 21 August 1944) 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 relocated to the US and...
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James Ivory
James Francis Ivory (born June 7, 1928) is an award-winning American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth...
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Gabriel Axel
Gabriel Axel (born 18 April 1918) is an Oscar winning Danish director, actor, writer and producer, best known for the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast (1987), which he wrote and directed.
Born in Århus, Denmark, on April 18, 1918, Axel spent most of...
Charles Crichton
Charles Crichton (6 August 1910 in Wallasey, Merseyside – 14 September 1999 in South Kensington, London) was an English film director and film editor. He became best known for directing comedies produced at Ealing Studios. Crichton enjoyed an...
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Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh (born 10 December, 1960) is a Northern Irish actor and film director.
Branagh, the second of three children, was born and brought up in Belfast to working class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, a...
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Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is an Italian-American film director, producer and screenwriter. Away from showbusiness, Coppola is also a vintner, magazine publisher and hotelier. He is a graduate of Hofstra University where he studied...
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Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, musician, producer, and director. He has been nominated for three BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards, won two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award....
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Giuseppe Tornatore
Giuseppe Tornatore (born 27 March 1956) is an Italian film director.
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...
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears (born 20 June 1941) is an English film director.
Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr. Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was...
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Jonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944) is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter.
Demme was born in Baldwin, New York, the son of Dorothy Demme and a public relations executive father. Demme has three children: Ramona, Brooklyn,...
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Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director and screenwriter. Stone came to prominence as a director with a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an American infantry soldier, and his...
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Neil Jordan
Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay) for The Crying Game.
Jordan was born in County Sligo, the son of Angela (née O'Brien), a painter, and Michael Jordan,...
