Lloyd Kaufman
(Film director):
Stanley Lloyd Kaufman, Jr. is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet.
Taika Waititi
(Film director):
Taika David Waititi, also known as Taika Cohen, is a New Zealand film director, writer, actor, painter and comedian.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2004 short film Two Cars, One Night.
Joel Potrykus
(Film director):
Joel Potrykus is an American film director and screenwriter. His feature film debut Ape won the Best New Director prize at the 2012 Locarno Film Festival, while his follow-up feature Buzzard won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2014 Ljubljana International Film Festival.
Nicolas Winding Refn
(Film director):
Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter and producer. He is known for directing the crime dramas Bleeder and the Pusher films, the fictionalised biographical film Bronson, the dramatic adventure film Valhalla Rising, the neo-noir crime film Drive and the thriller Only God Forgives.
Alex Gibney
(Film director):
Alex Gibney is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time".
His works as director include We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer; Casino Jack and the United States of Money; and Taxi to the Dark Side, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed at Bagram Air Force Base in 2002.
John Curran
(Film director):
John Curran is an American film director and screenwriter.
Sam Esmail
(Film director):
Sam Esmail is a film director.
Rodney Ascher
(Film director):
Rodney Ascher is a film director, film editor, film producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.
Peter Bogdanovich
(Film director):
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. His most critically acclaimed film is The Last Picture Show.
Uwe Boll
(Film director):
Uwe Boll is a German director, producer and screenwriter, whose work includes several films adapted from video games. He finances his own films through his Boll KG and Event Film Productions production companies. Many of his films are produced on low budgets.
Joe Lynch
(Film director):
Joe Lynch is an American film director and music video director, cinematographer, and film actor.
Gregg Araki
(Film director):
Gregg Araki is an American independent filmmaker. He is involved in New Queer Cinema.
Ira Sachs
(Film director):
Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. His first film was the acclaimed short Lady.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, his films have included the Sundance Film Festival selection The Delta, the Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue, and Married Life, starring Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan. His film, Keep the Lights On, debuted at Sundance in 2012. His newest film, Love Is Strange, premiered at Sundance in 2014.
Sachs is Jewish and openly gay. He lives and works in New York City.
Luc Besson
(Film director):
Luc Besson is a French film director, writer, and producer. He is known for directing and producing thrillers and action films that are visually rich. Besson had been nominated for Best Director and Best Picture César Awards for his films Léon: The Professional and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. He won Best Director and Best French Director for his film The Fifth Element. His Taken 2 is France's biggest export success.
In 1980 he founded his own production company, called Les Films du Loup, and later Les Films du Dauphin. This was superseded in 2000 by his co-founding EuropaCorp film company with his longtime collaborator, Pierre-Ange Le Pogam. Besson has been involved with filmmaking for more than 50 films, spanning 26 years, as writer, director, and/or producer. He has also been called 'the John Hughes of action movies,' due to his writing screenplays for action movies.