100 DIRECTORS' ESSENTIAL FILMS

Do click on Read More and the green links. Thanks to all following this surprisingly popular list. My own favourites are Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, Tarkovsky, Renoir and Hitchcock- all placed high on the list, among some other big names. Don’t worry about the order otherwise.

Anyway, alphabetically they are:

Akerman
Allen
Almodovar
Altman
Anderson (P.T)
Anderson (W)
Angelopoulos
Antonioni
Bergman
Bertolucci
Bong
Bresson
Bunuel
Cameron
Capra
Cassavetes
Ceylan
Chaplin
Coen bros
Coppola
Cuaron
Dardenne bros
De Sica
Dreyer
Eastwood
Eisenstein
Erice
Fassbinder
Fellini
Ford
Godard
Griffith
Haneke
Hawks
Herzog
Hitchcock
Hou
Huston
Imamura
Keaton
Kiarostami
Kieslowski
Kobayashi
Kore-eda
Kubrick
Kurosawa
Lang
Lean
Leone
Loach
Lubitsch
Lynch
Malick
Marker
Melville
Miyazaki
Mizoguchi
Murnau
Naruse
Nolan
Oliveira
Ophuls
Ozu
Pasolini
Peries
Pilger
Polanski
Powell
Ray (N)
Ray (S)
Renoir
Resnais
Rivette
Rohmer
Rossellini
Ruiz
Scorsese
Scott
Sembene
Sirk
Spielberg
Sternberg
Tarantino
Tarkovsky
Tarr
Truffaut
Varda
Vertov
Visconti
Von Trier
Weerasethakul
Welles
Wenders
Wilder
Wiseman
Wong
Wyler
Yang
Yoshida
Zhang

Bubbling under: Argento, Brakhage, Carné, Cissé, Cronenberg, Cukor, Denis, Diaz, Farhadi, Feuillade, Ghatak, Hong, Inarritu, Iosseliani, Ivens, Jackson, Jarmusch, Jia, Chuck Jones, Kazan, Kaurismaki, Spike Lee, Leigh, Linklater, Malle, Martel, Monteiro, Oshima, Paradjanov, Glauber Rocha, Sen, Shimizu, Sjostrom, Sokurov, Tourneur, Tsai, Vigo, Vlacil…

Taking into account importance, critical opinion and popular success (there are some directors and films included that i’m not very keen on), this is still a partly personal selection, so we have a few wild cards. The films i’ve chosen to represent the little known Sri Lankan director Lester James Peries have had high average scores but relatively few ratings. Do see his films if you can. I don’t think the Oscars are a good guide to quality, so directors are not always represented by Oscar winning films.

With gradual evolution of the list, in future there will no doubt be more by women, while modern directors will be more prominent. Hopefully more from Latin America, and from neglected countries and regions.

See also my lists Directors A-Z , Essential Films by Women and Notable Films by Black Directors

and on individual directors:

Mizoguchi Revered
Directors Round Mizoguchi
Tarkovsky’s Legacy
Films Admired by Tarkovsky
Satyajit Ray
Le Cinéma, c’est Jean Renoir
Essential Hitchcock
Essential Kubrick
Essential Godard
Essential Bergman
Lester James Peries, hidden master
Yoshida
Eric Rohmer
John Pilger
Joris Ivens
Quay brothers
The Essential Agnes Varda
Alice Guy-Blaché, Queen of the Pioneers
The Best of Wim Wenders
Gaston Kaboré
Greenaway A-Z

~

My favourite list-maker on Mubi is Apursansar, who is extremely knowledgeable and always up on recent films from round the world, and an expert on Latin American, Indian and German films in particular.

Some other lists I’ve done:

Kenji’s Canon: The Big 1000
My Favourite Films
The Japanese Canon
Pastel Films
The Labyrinth
The Kenji Awards
The Mubi/Auteurs World Cup Films (thanks to all who helped that groundbreaking event work)
The Welsh Connection
Let there be Light: The Birth of Films
Animation
Short Films
A Rosefinch Sang: the Czechoslovakian New Wave
19th Century Britain
Portugal, Land of my Dreams
A Library of Film Books
Essential French Films
The Silent Era: 1888-1929
The Best of British
Hidden Treasures
Mali
Tumbleweed and Tomahawks
The Caucasus
Spain: Mystery, Passion, Life
Canada: A Collection of Contraband Curiosities
An Exquisite Soirée at Baron Kenjitski’s Magnificent Chateau
Romanticism
Great Cinematographers
Painters and Films
Mental Illness
Essential African Films
Essential Hungarian Films
Poland
Kazakhstan
Nepal
Belgium
They Do Not Exist: Palestine
Lesotho
Double Bills