The Best French Directors of the 21st Century

As you may already know, Cannes usually has 4 or 5 spots reserved in its competition lineup for French filmmakers. Some years that quota turns out to be a crutch and other years it works tremendously well. Last year was the latter.

This year’s four French filmmakers vying for the Palme d’Or will be Claire Denis (great), Arnaud Desplechin (solid), Leonor Seraille (potential) and Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi (WTF).

Truth be told, with the exception of the US, France is probably the second best country in the world for the sheer amount of quality films being produced on a year-by-year basis.

With just 8 days to go before the Cannes Film Festival begins, we’ll be celebrating French cinema for the next few days. Let’s start with the filmmakers. I tried to come up with a list of 10 essential French directors working today. Although they work within the French studio system, Michael Haneke (Austrian), The Dardennes (Belgian) and Roman Polanski (Polish) sadly do not count.

Leos Carax
Bruno Dumont
Claire Denis
Celine Sciamma
Olivier Assayas
Jacques Audiard
Gaspar Noe
Jean-Luc Godard
Arnaud Desplechin
Francois Ozon
Abdelatif Kechiche

Honorary Mentions: Mia Hansen-Løve, Bertrand Bonello, Catherine Breillat, Phillipe Garrel, Xavier Beauvois and Alain Guiraudie.

Sadly, most of the French filmmakers from the Nouvelle Vague are gone; Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy and Jacques Rivette etc. Not to mention doc filmmaking extraordinaire Claude Lanzmann.

Godard is left.