Best Films By Directors Over 80

UPDATED: My 10-year-old IndieWire list of the Best Films By Directors Over 80 has significantly grown. We’ve seen a total boom of older filmmakers churning out great work these last few years.

The Wrap recently published a list of the 80+ year old filmmakers who are still busy making films. It’s recent phenomenon that we haven’t seen much of in prior decades. It used to be that older directors were deemed expendable and too risky to invest in, but now the tide has clearly turned.

EARLIER: For a few years now, Quentin Tarantino has been insisting that he plans to quit making movies after his 10th feature. He’s just 61 years old.

This whole notion of retiring after 10 movies comes from Tarantino’s theory that a director’s quality of work could only get worse as he ages. Tarantino wants his filmography to be perfect or, as he puts it, “without a misfire.”

“I guess I do feel that directing is a young man’s game. I do feel that cinema is changing, and I’m a little bit part of the old guard.”

The problem is that it’s a flawed theory. Forget the fact that some filmmakers have released their best films in their 60s. Altman directed “Gosford Park” at 76. Kurosawa directed “Ran” at 75. Scorsese gave us “The Wolf of Wall Street” at 72. Hitchcock released “Frenzy” at 74. Varda was 79 when her great “Faces Places” premiered at Cannes. Buñuel turned 77 when “The Obscure Object of Desire” shocked audiences.

Hell, Jerzy Skolimowski won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2022 for his donkey tale “EO.” The Polish writer-director was 84 at the time. Many zeroed in on Skolimowski’s age in their reviews; I don’t know how many times I had to read that “EO” felt like the work of a young filmmaker.

In terms of that age range, might I direct Mr. Tarantino to the following legendary directors releasing superb films during the twilight of their careers, all aged over 80.

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 81)
The Dead (John Huston, 81)
Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 81)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 82)
L’Argent (Robert Bresson, 82)
The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 82)
Before the Devil Knows (Sidney Lumet, 83)
Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice, 83)
Madadayo (Akira Kurosawa, 83)
Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard, 84)
Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 85)
Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, 86)
An Officer and a Spy (Roman Polanski, 86)
The Mule & Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood, 89)
I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliviera, 93)

That list might be growing soon. We’ve been seeing a lot of filmmakers, aged 80 years and older, still very much active these last few years, and they include Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Brian de Palma, Woody Allen, Hayao Miyazaki, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Frederick Wiseman, Werner Herzog, and Stephen Frears.

There are other filmmakers that could have been added, but the likes of Peter Weir, Jerry Schatzberg, Mel Brooks, James Ivory, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert Benton, and Elaine May have, in all likelihood, retired from the game.