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Curated category

English-language film directors

  • Peter JacksonPeter Jackson was born on the 31st of October 1961 in Wellington, New Zealand, and grew up in the far northern suburb of Pukerua Bay.
  • Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski was born on the 18th of August 1933 in interbellum Paris, the child of two agnostics from very different worlds.
  • William WylerWilliam Wyler walked away from the set of Ben-Hur in 1959 having just overseen a chariot race that took six months to film.
  • Guillermo del ToroGuillermo del Toro was born on the 9th of October 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and grew up in a house his father once described as "an enchanted castle."…
  • Kenneth BranaghKenneth Branagh was nine years old when his family packed up and left Belfast, fleeing the early violence of the Troubles.
  • Chris BouchardChris Bouchard stands at the center of a £3,000 budget for The Hunt for Gollum. This independent Lord of the Rings fan film relied on crowd-sourced visual…
  • Michel GondryMichel Gondry grew up in Versailles as the grandson of an inventor. That family connection to making things with your hands turns out to be the thread…
  • Alan RickmanAlan Sidney Patrick Rickman was born on the 21st of February 1946 in Brentford, London, and he spent his early years in the shadow of Wormwood Scrubs Prison…
  • David LeanDavid Lean spent fourteen years in silence after one of the most brutal critical encounters in cinema history. At a lunch in the Algonquin Hotel in New York…
  • Russo brothersThe Russo brothers directed Avengers: Endgame on a budget paid in part by student loans and credit cards. That credit card film came first.
  • Ridley ScottRidley Scott was born on the 30th of November 1937 in South Shields, a port town on the northeast coast of England, to a father who would serve as a Colonel…
  • Taika WaititiTaika Waititi stood at the Academy Awards podium in 2019 as the first person of Maori descent to win an Oscar in a screenplay category.
  • John BoormanJohn Boorman was born on the 18th of January 1933 in Shepperton, Middlesex, the son of a pub landlord whose own father had made and lost several fortunes as…
  • George NolfiGeorge Nolfi was finishing his PhD dissertation at UCLA in 1997 when he sold his first speculative script, Pathfinder, in a three-studio bidding war.