Team Top Ten: Best Directors of the 21st Century
Tuesday, April 2, 2013 at 4:00PM 
Steve McQueen didn't make the list but Fassy still loves him (as do many of our contributors)Amir here, to bring you the first edition of Team Top Ten, a communal list by all of Film Experience’s contributors that will sit in for our regular Tuesday Top Ten list once a month. For our first episode, we’ve decided to rank the best new directors of the 21st century. These are all directors who have made their first film after 2000. (Short films, TV and theatre work didn’t render anyone ineligible. Only feature length fiction and documentary films were considered.)
I had a blast compiling the 18 lists of our contributors to arrive at the final ten because their submissions were incredibly eclectic and surprising. I’d made a bet with myself that Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) would top the list, and lo and behold, he failed to make the cut altogether, though by a very fine margin. Korean director Bong Joon Ho was also left off, despite showing up on more than a handful of lists. Jason Reitman, Joshua Marston, Rian Johnson and David Gordon Green all came very close too but this was a tightly contested race, evidenced by the three-way tie for our tenth spot. Overall, 71 directors got at least one vote. We travelled all the way from Japan to Portugal, from Greece to Mexico, via documentaries, comedies and superhero films. We loved stories about Muslim families, gay romances, World War II and the beautifully painted worlds of Sylvain Chomet. What we didn't like very much turned out to be actors-turned-directors, as current Oscar champ Ben Affleck got only a single vote, and George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones failed to manage even that.
In the end, these are the twelve men and women Team Experience considers the best (thus far) of the 21st century crop:
=10. Michel Gondry
Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine, The Sciene of Sleep, Block Party, Be Kind Rewind, etcetera
Gondry's films are shaggy fantasies powered by a boundless imagination. They're more than a little goofy, speaking quirky as if it were a language, and they have an endearing handmade quality, with their maker's fingerprints visible around the rough edges. Bent as they are toward romance and optimism, Gondry's miniature worlds provide a little solace from reality.
- Andreas Stoehr
11 more directors after the jump
=10. Andrea Arnold
Wasp, Red Road, Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights
It's tempting to sum Andrea Arnold up by reducing her women to the sum of their mistakes - cuz boy, do her women make some bad decisions - but the films themselves resist that simplification at every turn. From the get-go she's been dedicated to rendering "difficult" women with an almost journalistic flatness - there's nothing in the way of the usual sorts of judgement, not for these women or her men it should be noted; can you think of a film that's sexualized its sexual predator as much as Fish Tank did Michael Fassbender? Arnold never looks for the easy way out - she's much more interested in the fog on the moors.
- Jason Adams
=10. Joachim Trier
Reprise, Oslo August 31st
Joaquim Trier has, in a remarkably short time, established himself as a filmmaker who I think has the ability and the considerable talents to become the next great European auteur. In Reprise, he lends a frenzied, impassioned wholly unique style to the story of two friends looking to make it as writers. And with Oslo, August 31st, his keen perception and remarkable empathy for the lead character makes the film as frank and honest about the subject of depression as any I've ever seen. Two pictures in, and it's enough to know we've got something special on our hands. I can't wait to watch him grow.
- Beau McCoy
9. Sarah Polley
Away From Her, Take This Waltz, Stories We Tell
She makes movies that feel traditional and familiar but also inventive, and she fills a gap in filmmaker voices we didn't even know existed. She went from artful, chilly restraint in Away From Her to florid, high emotions in Take This Waltz to playful historical excavation in Stories We Tell-- an incredible amount of range for her first three films, and a strong sign that she's only going to get better and more fascinating going forward.
- Katey Rich
8. Lucrecia Martel
La Ciénaga (The Swamp), The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel's films are like conduits to sensuous experience. Everything is close to the skin; all is felt. Her cinema comes direct with an in-built arousal of near-fragrant, elusive human interaction – whether you are of her world or distant from it. She stirs in us an innate response. The visual-aural textures disorient our vision and distort our hearing; they prod and grasp us deep down, somewhere between the heart and the gut. The hothouse poison of La ciénaga, the clammy resistance of The Holy Girl and the woozy torpidity of The Headless Woman all draw us into an orbit of social flux and personal despair. Her films slip us into and out of uncertain intoxication.
- Craig Bloomfield
7. Cristian Mungiu
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Beyond the Hills
I have to fess up that I didn't vote for Mungiu in isolation, but as part of a foursome I dubbed 'Romanians I Have Known and Loved' that also included his countrymen Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Radu Muntean; I did this because I know Nathaniel loves ties on lists, and I try to gratify him wherever possible. But even among such distinguished company (or any company, really), Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days stands out as an especially rigorous, incisive, and perfectly shaped vision. Neither so austere as to lose the breath and flesh of life, nor so restricted to its characters' POVs as to limit the scope of its historical vision, nor so self-aggrandizing in technique as to promote Mungiu over the story he is telling, 4 Months evokes in nightmarish tandem, but also at human scale, both a brutally no-win dramatic episode and an asphyxiating political regime. It's pretty unbeatable as a portrait of how iron-fisted, paranoid ideologies make themselves felt within day-to-day experience. I don't think Mungiu's Beyond the Hills attains nearly the same economy or insight, though its best scenes evoke temperament, politics, and tough environments with impressive force. I haven't seen Mungiu's other films thus far, but there's no way I'd miss anything he does from here onward.
- Nick Davis
6. John Cameron Mitchell
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus, Rabbit Hole
There are worse fates for an artist than being forever associated with one creation... if that one creation is as indelible, flexible and fascinating as "Hedwig", that is. Hedwig's transition from slip of a German girlie boy to ex-pat army wife was infamously botched (hence, the angry inch) but Hedwig had no such misshaps while leaping from the spontaneous excitement of the stage to the preserved creativity of the cinema. When I think of Hedwig (the film) I always think of "Wig in a Box" and John Cameron Mitchell's glittery ingenuity as the humble trailer "opens" up, transforming itself into a stage. His next two films -- quite different in tone but no less concerned with personal reinvention and artistic expression -- proved that Mitchell was no one-trick flash in the pan but a world class magician.
-Nathaniel R.
5. Charlie Kaufman
Synecdoche New York
The Night of the Hunter. Badlands. Eraserhead. Citizen Kane. Synecdoche, New York. Directorial debuts rarely amount to anything close to a masterpiece. But a handful of artists have managed to create transcendent cinema from their first time in the director's chair. Charlie Kaufman is probably better known as the writer of Eternal Sunshine, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation. But it was with Synecdoche, New York, his first attempt at direction, that he reached some kind of unthinkable intellectual and experiential apex. The film is certainly demanding, but it is also breathtaking in its ability to meld compassion, intellect, and heartbreak into a tender series of variations on the theme of death. Without much visual flourish, Kaufman elevates cinema to its highest place among the greatest works of art. Sometimes, one film is all it takes.
- Matt Zurcher
4. Asghar Farhadi
Dancing in the Dust, Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday, About Elly, A Separation
I have a confession to make: Of Farhadi's five films as a Director, I have only seen one. That one, A Separation, is a flat-out, no-holds-barred, exceeds-sky-high-expectations masterpiece. So much so, that even if none of his previous films were any good (and I hear that they are all, in fact, quite good), I probably still would have given him my #1 spot. There may be other filmmakers on this list whose next films I anticipate more eagerly, but there isn't one whose work I respect more. They have the potential for greatness. Farhadi has already achieved it.
- Daniel Bayer
3. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, etcetera
Thailand’s best-known cinematic son, Weerasethakul - “Joe” to his Anglophone fans - is a master of creating feelings through otherworldly imagery and sound: everything from red-eyed monkey ghosts to sterile hospitals to languid riverside sexual assignations is filtered through his camera with an impressionistic, dreamy detachment like nothing else in contemporary cinema.
- Tim Brayton
2. Joe Wright
Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, The Soloist, Anna Karenina, Hanna
Is it okay to have ranked Joe Wright so high while completely discounting The Soloist? It is if you take into account the four achievements he bookended around that 2009 non-event. With a steadily-more-ambitious series of films, Wright reveled in Jane Austen, showboated in Atonement, and took real chances with Anna Karenina and especially Hanna, his best and least typical film. The best thing about him is the sense that, despite the laurels for his first two features, he's still growing.
- Joe Reid
1. Kenneth Lonergan
You Can Count On Me, Margaret
You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan's intimate marvel of a debut film, came as the millennium kicked off, and, despite its piquant, tragic undertones, still glows with an innocent warmth. That's almost entirely due to the long shadows cast by the tortured process that his sophomore effort Margaret took to the screen, potent and dense with human politics post-9/11. That Lonergan's complex yet seemingly effortless comprehension of the timbres of youth and family still towers through the years between filming and release is a testament to his immense, understated talent, and to his own stubborn ideals.
- David Upton
Let us know what you think of the list. Who do you think is missing? Share your top tens in the comments.
Reader Comments (70)
My list:
1 - Bong Joon-ho, South Korea
Three movies and three masterpieces.
2 - Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand
True originality
3 - Lucrecia Martel, Argentina
A radical version of Jane Campion?
4 - Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania
The best screenplays
5 - Carlos Reygadas, Mexico
Bresson and Dreyer get a follower
6 - Luiz Fernando Carvalho, Brazil
Only one movie, but it is one of the most unforgettable experiences I've ever had. I'm ralking about To The Left of The Father. Look for it.
7 - Christophe Honoré, France
He made romance being cool again.
8 - Asghar Farhadi, Iran
The best political movies of the century
9 - Kenneth Lonergan, USA
He knows a lot about human beings
10 - Fabian Bielinski, Argentina
A great movie and a perfect masterpiece, El Aura. So sad he passed away so young.
Also, for the record, I was torturing Amir with three texts full of directors. With everyone's suggestions I came up with a list of at least hundred and five.
cal roth: I just looked up Bielinsky. Nine Queens was the first movie I wanted to see when I moved to Canada (2001) and when I finally saw it years later it felt like he's been around as long as Ricardo Darin. if God exists he's killing off the wrong directors.
I'm extremely happy with the inclusion of Lucrecia Martel, John Cameron Mitchell, Sarah Polley on the list. Others are well-chosen too (except for the top 2)... I still think many could be more deserved in those places.
I agreed that the like of Ramin Bahrani, Richard Kelly, Steve McQueen, Tomas Alfredson should be on the list.
tombeet -- from my understanding Alfredson was not eligible due to a feature film in 1995? i think?
cal roth -- agreed that Bong Joon ho woulda been a good choice. Hoping Snowpiercer is great. He was just outside my top ten but i hvaen't seen memories of murder.
Figured I may as well get in on the fun and share my list, which is also populist as all hell and I have NO REGRETS.
OK, I do have one-- I left off Kenneth Lonergan only because there were 10 others I felt more passionate about, but seeing him at the top here means I really do owe the Margaret director's cut a look. Also I'm super sad I couldn't make room for Tom McCarthy.
#1 Sarah Polley-- because she makes movies that feel traditional and familiar but also inventive, and she fills a gap in filmmaker voices we didn't even know existed.
#2 David Gordon Green-- because for the good and the bad, it's hard to imagine the last 10 years of indies without him
#3 Joe Wright -- because a century that so far seems to have produced scrappy, realist auteurs needs its glossy showman
#4 Michel Gondry -- because Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a miracle, and even the weaker films that have come since cement him as the most playful filmmaker we currently have.
#5 Alex Gibney -- because he's the ombudsman of the first decade of the 21st century and we needed him terribly
#6 Cristian Mungiu -- because oh my God 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
#7 Pete Docter --because Up is amazing, and because you can't have the first decade of the 21st century without Pixar (and none of his fellow all-stars at the studio are eligible)
#8 Andrea Arnold -- because no one can match her portrayal of feral young girlhood. Also because of Michael Fassbender's shirtless kitchen scene in Fish Tank
#9 J.J. Abrams -- because he is the primary pop stylist of the moment, and his penchant for optimism, bright colors and wit are a huge relief
#10 David Wain -- because his movies make me laugh harder, over and over again, than anyone else's
Taking Katey's lead and producing my own list, if only to help you all feel very worldly and superior by comparison:
1) Joe Wright: for all the reasons I stated.
2) Rian Johnson: Because "Brick" is the greatest little thing, and because his next two films went in very different directions but never flattened his creativity.
3) John Cameron Mitchell: Because he's 3-for-3 as far as movies where you expect something crass (drag queens; grief porn; actual porn) and get buckets of genuine, idiosyncratic feeling in addition.
4) Joshua Marston: Because he's as curious and open as many of his peers seem to be closed-off and tunnel-visioned.
5) Kenneth Lonergan: Because "You Can Count on Me" just keeps getting better and better with every year that passes without another film being able to touch its relationship dynamics, and because "Margaret" showed a creative being still thrashing to produce.
6) Stephen Daldry: Because "The Hours" alone would have been enough, and because I'm a contrarian little shit when it comes to "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."
7) Sarah Polley: Because the growing pains of "Take This Waltz" could still feel so beautiful even while being so much messier than the pristine "Away From Her."
8) Tony Gilroy: Because he both burrows deep into and yet transcends genre, with "Michael Clayton" (legal thriller as character study), "Duplicity" (the most underrated film of the decade?), and the "Bourne" reboot (functional but brilliant in spots).
9) Benh Zeitlin: Because he's the only one-film-wonder I'm willing to list purely on spec.
10) Cary Fukunaga: Because "Sin Nombre" was strong enough to make me think my inability to connect with "Jane Eye" was probably my (and Mia Wasikowska's) fault.
Did not really consider the directors with the one movie. Seems unfair to the others and the directors to already declare them genius, although Kaufman is a one-time director- but his voice has been around for years.
But if I had to pick others who are most promising:
Lena Dunham- I hope she returns with a feature (that hopefully is not too guided by Apatow movies).
Joe Cornish
Benh Zeitlin
Bart Layton
Sean Durkin
Dee Rees- Realized I put her in scratching her potential. I stand by that as I fear the movies she could make nobody will finance.
Cannot believe I forgot the Aussies, Andrew Dominik and John Hillcoat (though he technically started in the late 90s doing docs).
Oooohhh Jonathan Glazer! How could he have been missed (even though I didn't think of him either. :)
Birth gets better with every viewing, which for me is about 5 times a year. I dream of introducing this movie at Nicole's AFI tribute. :)
Dee Rees is a great pick, CMG, and she's got some people backing her up so I'm not too worried just yet:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Pariah-Director-Dee-Rees-Set-Man-Woman-30720.html
Okay, here are my 10.
Top Ten
1.) Edgar Wright- The only person in the rise of fanboy and geek culture in mainstream cinema who never felt like he compromised anything to get where he is.
2.) Joon-ho Bong- Film to film getting as creative and different in each entry.
3.)Asghar Farhadi- Largely on the strength of A Separation which was one of the finest movies in years. Rightfully or wrongfully, a major force into showing Iranians as human to a lot of the world too stuck and stubborn toward the images of those in power.
4.) Ramin Bahrani- Maybe it is just because of my connections to Queens that I really love Chop Shop probably more than I reasonably should, but Bahrani on the immigrant experience and, like Farhadi, being a life-line to for people to those experiences (Bahrani's Iranian-American background certainly lends to that) is something incredibly important.
5.) Andrew Dominik- Jesse James was one of the best films of the last decade and I feel like Killing Them Softly will rightfully get re-evaluations later on from people who will see the satire rather than taking it at face-value. Even so, that movie was too pretty to dismiss.
6.) David Gordon Green- I actually find his bizarre career-arch refreshing. If he is making the movies he wants, more power to him. Anybody who does All the Real Girls, George Washington, and Pineapple Express has a mindscape worth noting.
7.) Jeff Nichols- Unlike DGG, he seems to be sticking to Americana stories and occasionally twisted such fables into something palpable even while having stories that take turns into the supernatural.
8.) Joe Wright- It was actually the movie Hanna where I thought, 'This guy is onto something.', in his creativity. Not a work that lends itself to being among the best but somehow it was when he dropped his guard and made things a little vulgar and sugar-coated that I think was important to not have him boxed in.
9.) Sarah Polley- I feel like her films are about honesty and often that leads to having characters trying to be honest about indulging in their fantasies. Some people find that maddening, I think it is great.
10.) Ben Wheatley- An off-beat British mixture of early Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi in both the comic and dark sensibilities.
Since everyone seems to want to see the full list, here are some of the directors with multiple votes off the top of my head: Porumboiu, Haigh, Dominik, Miguel Gomes, Fukunaga, Greengrass, Gareth Evans, Tarsem, Bahrani, Hertzfedlt, Reygadas, Gibney, Lanthimos, Chomet, McCarthy, Daldry, Dolan, Pui, Muntean, Apatow, Carruth, etc.
And of course, the close runners-up I named in the post, plus the twelve women I mentioned in the comments.
I may not remember the exact order but if anyone is curious this was my list:
1. Don Hertzfeldt
2. Paul Greengrass
3. Asghar Farhadi
4. Christiam Mungiu
5. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
6. Asghar Farhadi
7. MIchel Gondry
8. Debra Granik
9. Andrew Dominik
10. Kenneth Lonnergan
These were the ten on my list, for general perusal: The ten names I picked were: 01. Lucrecia Martel. 02. Bong Joon-ho. 03. Carlos Reygadas. 04. Andrew Dominik. 05. Lisandro Alonso. 06. Andrey Zvyagintsev. 07. Neill Blomkamp. 08. Jessica Hausner. 09. Christopher Smith. 10. Maren Ade.
Since everyone else is doing it, this was my list:
1. Asghar Farhadi (A Separation is a goddamn masterpiece)
2. Joe Wright (Hanna showed unexpected range)
3. Jason Reitman (had those staged readings been films, he would have been #1)
4. Bong Joon-ho (A true genre STYLIST)
5. John Cameron Mitchell (Rabbit Hole was so unexpected after Shortbus and Hedwig, and it's just as good, if not better)
6. Sylvain Chomet (the hand-crafted quality of his films makes me feel all warm and glowing inside)
7. David Michôd (We have him to thank for Jacki Weaver)
8. Benh Zeitlin (Best film of last year, one of the best of the new millennium)
9. Michel Gondry (Would be higher, but everything after Eternal Sunshine has been a disappointment... but wouldn't anything?)
10. Duncan Jones (Moon was fantastic and Source Code was far more enjoyable on a second viewing (on cable last week) than I thought it would be (even if it still doesn't really make a lick of sense).
I'm kind of pissed now that I didn't list Pete Docter (the ending of Monsters, Inc. and the entirety of Up break my heart six ways to Sunday, and he's a damn good stand-in for all the Pixar geniuses) and Tony Gilroy (Duplicity! SO GOOD! And we partially have him to thank for Tilda's Oscar).
Sorry but Take This Waltz was really bad. Had to turn it off after 30 mins which some how felt like 2 hours. Photography was good but the script was so terrible and fluffy I felt like I was floating around aimlessly. The actors felt really awkward together (Silverman and Williams), and the look of the whole thing was so unrealistic.. Really where are the people that live in perfect vintage clothing, furniture and color schemes. I've been to Toronto several times and those colors aren't what I associate it with. The humble hot patient clever artist that just so happens to live across the street, single.. give me a break. The dialogue made me want to stab myself Piano Teacher style. Take This Waltz and shove it
Great list. Especially the inclusion of Trier. But where the heck is Todd Field?
Love the inclusion of Polley, and the mention of Dee Rees!
This might be stretching a bit, but I would include fellow Canuck Denis Villeneuve since he really hits his stride in "Maelstrom", and then to my favorite "Incendies". (His first feature i think is in 1998).
Glazer (birth, sexy beast)
McQueen (shame, hunger)
Johnson (looper, brick, brothers bloom)
Joon-Ho (memories of murder, the host, mother)
Wook-Park (thirst, lady vengeance, oldboy, sympathy for..., JSA, stoker)
Inarritu (amores perros, biutiful, babel, 21 grams)
Dominik (jesse james, chopper, killing them softly)
Nichols (take shelter, shotgun stories, mud)
Coppola (lost in translation, virgin suicides, marie antoinette)
Jones (moon, source code)
Your list is full of irrelevant directors. Kenneth Lonergan? John Cameron Mitchell? Joe Wright? Are you joking?