# Movie director

A **movie director** is a person who leads the making of a movie (or *film*). They take care of the artistic things in the movie. They give instructions to the actors and direct the people that work on the movie.

Directors give many of their responsibilities to other members of their movie-making team (called a movie crew). For example, the person who is responsible for the lighting is told by the director what style of lighting he wants and he then creates the lighting for him. It is common for movie directors to work closely with a movie producer. Movie producers are people who control the non-artistic side of movie making. For example, they control all the money that is used for making the movie.

The amount of control a director has in creating their movie is different for each director. It is most common for directors to have some control, while the rest of the movie-making is controlled by the movie studio, and by the people who pay for making the movie. This was very common for American movies made in the 1930s to 1950s. There are a small number of directors who are given complete control over making their movies. For example, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron all had a great amount of control in making their movie.

## Famous directors

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| * Bharathan
* JJ Abrams
* Pedro Almodóvar
* Robert Altman
* Paul Thomas Anderson
* Lindsay Anderson
* Luc Besson
* Theodoros Angelopoulos
* Jean-Jacques Annaud
* Michelangelo Antonioni
* John Hughes
* Darren Aronofsky
* Richard Attenborough
* Ingmar Bergman
* Kathryn Bigelow
* John Boorman
* Robert Bresson
* Luis Buñuel
* Tim Burton
* James Cameron
* Jane Campion
* Frank Capra
* John Cassavetes
* Nuri Bilge Ceylan
* Charlie Chaplin
* Henri-Georges Clouzot
* Coen brothers
* Francis Ford Coppola
* Sofia Coppola
* Frank Darabont
* Vittorio De Sica
* Carl Theodor Dreyer
 |  | * Ava DuVernay
* Clint Eastwood
* Sergei Eisenstein
* Rainer Werner Fassbinder
* Federico Fellini
* Todd Field
* David Fincher
* Miloš Forman
* John Ford
* John Frankenheimer
* William Friedkin
* Samuel Fuller
* Greta Gerwig
* Terry Gilliam
* Jean-Luc Godard
* D. W. Griffith
* Michael Haneke
* Howard Hawks
* Werner Herzog
* Alfred Hitchcock
* John Huston
* Kon Ichikawa
* Peter Jackson
* Jean-Pierre Jeunet
* Chuck Jones
* Elia Kazan
* Buster Keaton
* Abbas Kiarostami
* Krzysztof Kieślowski
* Masaki Kobayashi
* Stanley Kubrick
* Akira Kurosawa
 |  | * Emir Kusturica
* Fritz Lang
* David Lean
* Spike Lee
* Sergio Leone
* Ken Loach
* George Lucas
* Sidney Lumet
* Ernst Lubitsch
* David Lynch
* Terrence Malick
* Louis Malle
* Joseph L. Mankiewicz
* Steve McQueen
* Georges Méliès
* Kenji Mizoguchi
* F. W. Murnau
* Christopher Nolan
* Frank Oz
* Yasujirō Ozu
* Sam Peckinpah
* Roman Polanski
* Nicholas Ray
* Satyajit Ray
* Rob Reiner
* Jean Renoir
* Alain Resnais
* Éric Rohmer
* George A. Romero
 |  | * Roberto Rossellini
* Franklin J. Schaffner
* Martin Scorsese
* Ridley Scott
* Don Siegel
* Steven Soderbergh
* Padmarajan
* Steven Spielberg
* Oliver Stone
* Quentin Tarantino
* Andrei Tarkovsky
* Bela Tarr
* Jiří Trnka
* François Truffaut
* Paul Verhoeven
* King Vidor
* Luchino Visconti
* Lars von Trier
* The Wachowskis
* Orson Welles
* Wim Wenders
* Billy Wilder
* Ranjith
* Robert Wise
* Edgar Wright
* William Wyler
* Karel Zeman
* Robert Zemeckis
* David Yates
* Chloe Zhao
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