Your favorite directorial debuts ever

@Tonda
The film amazes me. Has so much energy and so much emotional power. You’re right, some guys are just whooping ass right out of the gate. Innaritu hasn’t disappointed me yet.

@The Dude
Did you not like Synecdoche New York? Why the face?

I have to see George Washington soon… But wtf with Your Highness DGG?

Alfonso Cuaron’s Sólo con tu pareja

@Santino

Solo Con Tu Pareja is pretty damn good.

Yet another thread about this!

…but it’s free, so it bears repeating. Shorts and medium-length films are disregarded as debuts.

The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
Airplane! – Abrahams, Zucker x 2
Araya – Margot Benacerraf
L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
El Chacal de Nahueltoro – Miguel Littín
La ciénaga – Lucrecia Martel
Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
Clandestinos – Fernando Pérez
Commissar – Aleksandr Askoldov
Dancing in the Rain – Bostjan Hladnik
The Dreamlife of Angels – Erick Zonca
Eraserhead – David Lynch
Fists in the Pocket – Marco Bellocchio
A Generation – Andrzej Wajda
The Hour of the Furnaces – Fernando Solanas, Octavio Getino
Invasión – Hugo Santiago
Jakub – Jana Sevciková
Kairat – Darezhan Omirbayev
Love Without Pity – Eric Rochant
Maborosi – Hirokazu Koreeda
Odd Number – Manuel Antin
The Official Story – Luis Puenzo
Paris Is Burning – Jennie Livingston
The Perfumed Nightmare – Kidlat Tahimik
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Pickpocket – Jia Zhang-ke
Rachel, Rachel – Paul Newman
Rebels of the Neon God – Tsai Ming-liang
Return of the Secaucus Seven – John Sayles
Salaam Bombay! – Mira Nair
Sex, Lies and Videotape – Steven Soderbergh
Sexual Dependency – Rodrigo Bellott
The Spirit of the Beehive – Víctor Erice
Sugar Cane Alley – Euzhan Palcy
The Third Part of the Night – Andrzej Zulawski
Time to Die – Arturo Ripstein
Titicut Follies – Frederick Wiseman
Touki Bouki – Djibril Diop Mambety
Toy Story – John Lasseter
The Unscrupulous Ones – Ruy Guerra
Verónico Cruz – Miguel Pereira
The White Dove – Frantisek Vlácil
White Mountains – Melis Ubukeyev

Other debuts I like:

12 Angry Men – Sidney Lumet
Accattone – Pier Paolo Pasolini
Barravento – Glauber Rocha
Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall – Luis García Berlanga
Black Girl – Ousmane Sembene
Breathless – Jean-Luc Godard
Butterfly Wings – Juanma Bajo Ulloa
El cadáver exquisito – Víctor Ruano
El caudillo pardo – Aldo Salvini
Eve’s Bayou – Kasi Lemmons
The Funeral – Juzo Itami
The Goddess – Wu Yonggang
Green Fish – Lee Chang-dong
Gregorio – Alejandro Legaspi, Stefan Kaspar, Fernando Espinoza
Japón – Carlos Reygadas
Judas Kiss – Sebastián Gutiérrez
A King and His Movie – Carlos Sorín
Knife in the Water – Roman Polanski
Laws of Gravity – Nick Gómez
Little Man Tate – Jodie Foster
Love and Death on Long Island – Richard Kwietniowski
Lucía – Humberto Solás
La Moños – Mireia Ros
My Left Foot – Jim Sheridan
My Name Is Ivan – Andrei Tarkovsky
Mysterious Object at Noon – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
The Night of the Living Dead – George A. Romero
Nocturno 29 – Pere Portabella
Ordinary People – Robert Redford
Oriana – Fina Torres
Pather Panchali – Satyajit Ray
Rapado – Martín Rejtman
Rodrigo D, no futuro – Víctor Gaviria
Signs of Life – Werner Herzog
Suzhou River – Lou Ye
Terms of Endearment – James L. Brooks
Throw Momma from the Train – Danny De Vito
The Unbelievable Truth – Hal Hartley
The White Balloon – Jafar Panahi

That should be quite definitive for me. ^Those are all better than Reservoir Dogs and Clerks, btw. XD

I’d also like to add Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty For Me.

Well over a hundred fifty debut titles listed and nobody’s yet mentioned…

Jane Campion’s “Sweetie”.

@R.

Reservoir Dogs gives hope to clerks around the globe that they can be a great director like Tarantino. A clear delusion if there ever was one, but inspiring nonetheless.

Had I seen Clerks before I saw Dogma, I probably would have also had high expectations about Kevin Smith. Still, neither of those two films I consider “bad”… just not worthy of being in such a list.

Anyway, another two:

House of Games – David Mamet
Yanco – Servando González

Ivan’s Childhood

God, I forgot about Ivan’s Childhood. Thumbs up, Dzimas.

Steamroller and the Violin was his first film. It is longer than a short.

Student films don’t count, Glegs. Also, there’s no global consensus on the length of a short film, and this was considered one in the Soviet.

He did The Killers as well,

but I assumed we were talking about feature length films here.

Fair enough. And I was saying that because Steamroller is generally referred to as being a feature.

Yeah, he also co-directed another student short between Killers and Steamroller. Glegs was obviously referring to the AMPAS definition of a short film (<40mins). You’re right, though. Ivan’s Childhood is rightfully considered his debut feature.
EDIT: Glegs, I’ve never heard of Steamroller being referred to as a feature film.

Dennis Hopper’s directorial debut.

Ah shit, I love Dennis Hopper. He was scheduled to visit Australia in 2010 to promote a festival of his work in Melbourne, but then he was diagnosed. I never got to see him. :(

My personal favorite,

by Michael Roemer, largely because of the great Abbey Lincoln.

@Le Tigre, it has an actual narrative, critics always refer to it as being a feature film (and also people who have analysed it) and if it means anything it isn’t listed as a short on imdb.

O Sangue
1989
Pedro Costa

@Glegs: imdb (who’s categorisation is irrelevant anyway) wouldn’t have it listed as a short because it adheres to the AMPAC definition of a feature, which is often considered quite radical. It applying to a 46 minute Soviet film in retrospect is idiotic. The Screen Actors Guild, for example, defines a short as less than 80 minutes. Also, critics and analysts always referring to it as a feature film is untrue. You said before that it’s “generally referred to as a feature”, which, I disagree with, but would be more accurate.

Haha okay, it doesn’t bother me that much

Yeah, I’m one of those guys who think Citizen Kane and Ivan’s Childhood are the two greatest directorial debuts, so I hate modern American definitions fucking up the latter’s status! I wish I could argue that Permanent Vacation is a short so I can say Stranger than Paradise is Jarmusch’s debut feature!

Ivan’s Childhood is definitely an excellent film. Surely L’Atalante would count as well, as Vigo’s first and last feature.

Nah, Zero For Conduct is a feature lmao.

Hahaha dear god

Excluding shorts (<40 min), these are my ten favourite:

Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Ágnes Hranitzky)
Badlands (Terrence Malick)
The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke)
Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic)
Eraserhead (David Lynch)
Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
Breathless (Jean-luc Godard)

The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda)
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Who’s That Knocking at My Door (Martin Scorsese)
Pi (Darren Aronofsky)
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner)
Thief (Michael Mann)
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)

Pretty hard to top Pather Panchali or Citizen Kane but some of my personal faves:

Breathless – J.L. Godard
The Black Stallion – Carroll Ballard
Personal Best – Robert Town
A World Apart – Chris Menges
Hustle and Flow Craig Brewer