Rotten Tomatoes
Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

Great Directors

Play trailer Poster for Great Directors 2010 1h 26m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
66% Tomatometer 38 Reviews 43% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
Filmmaker Angela Ismailos has conversations with 10 of the world's most renowned directors, soliciting their point of view about the creative process and the context of their work in the contemporary world. Among those interviewed are Bernardo Bertolucci, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, David Lynch and Todd Haynes, who trace the origins of their art to the influence of their predecessors -- Lynch credits Fellini, and, for Haynes' outsider cinema, the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a role.
Great Directors

What to Know

Critics Consensus

Great Directors spreads itself too thin by focusing on 10 different filmmakers, but the thin overview still provides an intriguing primer for audiences who aren't already familiar with the profession.

Read Critics Reviews

Critics Reviews

View More
Catherine Shoard Guardian 03/31/2011
2/5
You'd learn more just watching one of their films. Go to Full Review
Sukhdev Sandhu Daily Telegraph (UK) 03/31/2011
2/5
In the end, The Great Directors is neither a manual nor a toolkit, but a miscellany that needs to be a monograph. Go to Full Review
J. R. Jones Chicago Reader 01/27/2011
Though her choice of interview subjects is so random and the discourse so broad that this 2009 documentary never really arrives anywhere... it delights from start to finish and then evaporates. Go to Full Review
Robert W. Butler Kansas City Star 09/23/2010
3.5/4
This is one of the best movies ever about film directors. Go to Full Review
Ray Greene Boxoffice Magazine 08/27/2010
3/5
It's flawed, but it beats the veiled promo films we usually get about the inner workings of cinematic creation. Go to Full Review
Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More
Kyle M @RT77296778 Mar 3 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 08/26/2016 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 09/30/2015 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 08/03/2015 Great Directors is a simple, but interesting documentary about great filmmakers See more 02/16/2015 Too much European bullshit, but interesting otherwise. See more 10/28/2014 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

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW
Blank City 82% 73% Blank City Watchlist Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child 86% 86% Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child Watchlist Cameraman: The Life & Work of Jack Cardiff 97% 91% Cameraman: The Life & Work of Jack Cardiff Watchlist The Pervert's Guide to Cinema 87% 86% The Pervert's Guide to Cinema Watchlist Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film 86% 59% Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis Filmmaker Angela Ismailos has conversations with 10 of the world's most renowned directors, soliciting their point of view about the creative process and the context of their work in the contemporary world. Among those interviewed are Bernardo Bertolucci, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, David Lynch and Todd Haynes, who trace the origins of their art to the influence of their predecessors -- Lynch credits Fellini, and, for Haynes' outsider cinema, the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays a role.
Director
Angela Ismailos
Producer
Mamta Trivedi, Angela Ismailos
Screenwriter
Emma Segal
Distributor
Paladin
Production Co
Anisma Films
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Jul 2, 2010, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Sep 1, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$17.9K
Runtime
1h 26m