Who are the most celebrated living filmmaker?

[Curtis, baby]

+ Which living filmmakers are most celebrated as "artists"?

Now that Godard is gone... I'm thinking Scorsese and Herzog around the tops

[greennui]

WKW, Lynch

[wba]

For me, it would be people like Catherine Breillat, Jacques Doillon, Bill Plympton, James Gray, Mamoru Oshii, Hayao Miyazaki, Michael Mann, Brian De Palma, Dario Argento, etc.

Don't know what "The world" loves. Probably Spielberg?

[sally]

none, cinema is over, fin, dead. even if people are still making films, using the same equipment, the same techniques, it's over. (or something new, to be foolishly hopeful) we're all necrophiles now.

[wba]

Yeah, you're probably right.
I mean it has been dying since the 1950s, so, 70 years later, it should be finally abvious even to us cinephiles.

[nrh]

hard to think about this question and not fall into an existential pit.

godard may be the last filmmaker who was just too big to dismiss, monumental enough that even the worst middlebrow critics were forced to go out and grapple with goodbye to language or image book, that every film student would have to see at least one movie by, that festivals could simply not reject.

which is not to say there are not great directors anymore, but that this kind of historical consensus will likely never happen again. like i could say hou but by the time his greatest movies were being released distribution (and maybe a certain kind of cinephile culture) had collapsed to the point where they were niche culture, if they were available to see it all. godard's movies circulated widely, including through small film societies all over the world (a friend in kerala was just telling me about the love for his work there).

[Angel]

Of course you meant the most overrated living filmmaker.

According to TSPDT's readers poll:
Coppola, Francis Ford
Scorsese, Martin
Lynch, David
Anderson, Paul Thomas
Coen, Joel & Ethan Coen
Wong Kar-wai
Tarantino, Quentin
Malick, Terrence
Spielberg, Steven
(all of them ranked above JLG)

According to critics... well, we have to wait another month for Sight & Sound's results.

[flip]

if we're talking about directors who have a similar kind of name recognition and artistic standing as godard and bergman and bunuel had, then from europe i'd probably say lars von trier, michael haneke, and maybe pedro almodovar. not saying these directors deserve the comparison or anything about how good their films are (fairly sure i just listed some of the most reviled directors here at scfz) but those three seem very famous and are taken seriously.

in north american cinema, probably terrence malick, pt anderson, coens, wes anderson and david lynch belong in the conversation, and maybe people like alejandro gonzalez inarritu and guillermo del toro are joining that company.

not sure about the rest of the world, wong kar-wai probably, maybe even zhang yimou?

[nrh]

as odd as it is to say it miyazaki is a real contender, certainly a true global popular filmmaker.

what would be the youngest directors that could enter the conversation, or the ones with the youngest careers? my gut says tsai and apichatpong; when i first started to go see their movies in theaters and festivals the audience was alienated, even hostile, but now both seem to be attractive very enthusiastic, increasingly young audiences.

as much as i hate to say it kore-eda probably belongs in the conversation as well, at least as far as official, institutional representation is concerned.

[flip]

kore-eda is a really good thought, bong joon-ho is another who maybe is there, or will be after one or two more films.

when i was thinking about this, i was asking which international directors i wouldn't be surprised to see in a nyt crossword, and i've definitely seen bong joon-ho there once, and almodovar, von trier, and haneke (only because amour was best pic nominated) wouldn't surprise me either, nor would miyazaki, though some other names in this thread would be welcome but a bit shocking to me. all of the usa directors would be unsurprising tho

[...]

Judging from twitter cinephiles, Pedro Costa, Lisandro Alonso, Lucrecia Martel, Hong Sang-soo and, hell, Michael Bay are in the running for alienating the softies, championed by the hardcore. Godard is a bit more complicated than that thanks to the era he came into prominence in, alienation and the distanced outsider of iconic appeal is a major facet of his appeal, but difficult to replicate in this era in the same way, so the true cinephile test takes on a different aspect. If you're just talking about method and ability, the art of film, without referencing the fandom, that too is a different thing also hard to replicate for how movies have changed and the role of critics and directors have changed with it. If you're talking about someone who'll reshape the way we think of the medium, then it might be more likely to be someone coming from video, Vimeo, Youtube, or even tiktok or something than any director trying to rework the old terrain.

[...]

There's also good reason to think the next "Godard" won't be coming from the same tradition of film, art, and literature, maybe look towards films like Neptune Frost or some other works that are offering an alternative that seeks to expand on the heritage. But then that isn't quite the same as "most celebrated" now but does poke at who is celebrating and what the nature of that celebration in regards to movie as critique.