Great Directors

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Kyle M @RT77296778 Mar 3, 2026 Mainly for selective cinephiles who admires the involved filmmakers in this documentary with a directorially horizonal range that feels limited albeit being a variety across different cinematic languages but grants the rest with insightful satisfaction that still delves into the ideal approach between artistic storytelling and personal lean. (B+) See more Aug 26, 2016 An okay documentary that interviews a bevy of talented directors and doesn't have a whole lot to say about them since so many of them are covered. No film can be bad that spends a good deal of time talking to David Lynch about his work, but so many of these directors are given too little time to say anything of serious interest about their work and career. Worth a look, but temper expectations appropriately. See more Sep 30, 2015 B+ I expected an entire movie about great directors talking about how film has changed the world. What I got was a female director interviewing only ten of those directors. But despite the fact that I want more voices and more directors, everything these directors say is great and inspiring. See more Aug 3, 2015 Great Directors is a simple, but interesting documentary about great filmmakers See more Feb 16, 2015 Too much European bullshit, but interesting otherwise. See more Oct 28, 2014 Gathering together directors from different milieus and merging their interviews into one film sounds great, but with ineffectual editing and not enough variety in your directors, what you get is this documentary. Director Angela Ismailos travelled the world interviewing directors for, what she calls, clarity in her own film endeavors. It's a very apparent vanity project, which often finds Ismailos edited into the interviews for no apparent reason, so she can give her two cents. Throughout the film I kept thinking, "Why is she onscreen? We don't care about her!" The directors she assembled were an interesting selection, including David Lynch, Todd Haynes, Liliana Cavani, Catherine Breillat, and Bernardo Bertolucci. For the length of the film, and all it covered, it would have been better to see even more directors talk about their films, or else have a narrative within the framework of the documentary to explain bigger concepts. Ismailos lets these people ramble on about aspects of their lives without a clear reason, and so it feels incoherent and dull. The interviews deal in obscurity, gender politics, New Wave cinema, and indie fare, but don't coalesce at any point. We don't learn anything about the directors as people or much about their work, only anecdotes better put to use as blurbs in an online profile in Variety. See more Read all reviews

Great Directors

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