Who are some of the greatest foreign film directors?

Trahn Ahn Hung

Cyclo

Scent of Green Papaya

I come with the Rain

Verticle Ray of teh Sun

Pedro Almodovar / Spain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Almod%C3%B3var

Todo Sobre Mi Madre

Mala Educacion

Hable Con Ella

depends what u mean by "foreign"

u mean "non-US"?

Hou Hsiao-hsien - City of Sadness, Goodbye South

Ozu

Tokyo Story

A Story of Floating Weeds

Early Spring

Bresson

Au Hasard Balthazar

Mouchette

Pickpocket

Dario Argento. end of thread

foreign?

Alfred Hitchcok

David Lean

Sly Stallone

Roman Polanski

Robert Rodriquez

Giuseppe Tornatore Writer & Director of ~ Cinema Paradiso

With music by Ennio Morricone (did scores for all the great spaghetti Eastwood Westerns)

Oh man. This is a tough one. So many great directors. I will start with the titans:

Federico Fellini:

8 1/2

La Dolce Vita

Akira Kurosawa:

Rashomon

Ran

Jean Renoir:

Rules of the Game

Not quite the titans, but modern greats:

Francois Truffault:

400 blows

Day for night

Werner Herzog:

Aguirre, Wrath of God

Fitzcarraldo

Fassbinder:

The Marriage of Maria Braun

And a few more current greats that need to be mentioned:

krystof kieslowski:

Decalogue (a serious of ten TV programs made for Polish TV based on the Ten Commandments)

Red

Whie

Blue (three separate but interelated films)

Jean Pierre Jeunet:

Delicatessen

Amelie

City of lost children

Yimou Zhang:

Hero

House of Flying Daggers

Raise the Red Lantern

The previous posts are all good as well.

And if you think you have had enough, try watching anything by Lars Von Trier. Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves are the best. More difficult are the minimalist Manderlay and Dogville. After watching these movies it will come as no surprise that Von Trier has severe depression and has tried to kill himself.

Have you seen any by Éric Rohmer?

Wim Wenders - Der Himmel ueber Berlin (Wings of Desire)

I want to second the mention of Werner Herzog, whose films often have a theme of a lone man struggling against vast and unforgiving nature. At the top of my list is "Aguirre: The Wrath of God." It was one of the inspirations of Copolla's "Apocalypse Now," but done on a budget that wouldn't have paid for the catering on Copolla's film set. Make sure to watch the DVD interview of Herzog, who is a wonderful raconteur. The making of "Aguirre," as with most of Herzog's films, is as fascinating as the film itself.

Regarding Fellini, my pick is "La Dolce Vita" over "8.5" (sorry, I can't find my one-half symbol on the keyboard). It's heresy, I suppose, but I preferred Bob Fosse's "remake" of "8.5" in "All That Jazz." "La Dolce Vita" seems more important to me, because it deals with the illusions of a glitzy but emotionally unfulfilling life in a way that I find accessible.

Regarding Kurosawa, I recommend "Ikiru" over some of the more famous films like "Rashomon." I think that it's a film that can actually change lives by getting people to think about the value of living with a purpose.

If you really want to get into the history of film-making, check out some of the old German expressionists, notably F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, in films like "Nosferatu" and "M."

By the way, if "foreign" includes Australian, I would highly recommend Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout." There were a number of excellent films out of Australia in the '70s and early '80s, but "Walkabout" is the one that has grabbed me most powerfully.

Ingmar Bergman?

Woody Allen: "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera"

Theo Angelopoulos and Wong Kar Wai.

faraway so close wrote:

Wim Wenders - Der Himmel ueber Berlin (Wings of Desire)

And Paris, Texas.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Have you seen any by Éric Rohmer?

Absolutely. Wonderful work.

Like I said, there are just so many, especially the French. With a second chance I will add Jean Luc Godard. I will also second all the subsequent posts (cna't believe I forgot Bergman). Although I am not familiar with Theo Angelopoulos and Wong Kar Wai. Any recommendations for these two?

Wong Kar Wei- In the Mood for Love

This is a great film! I second Aguirre: The Wrath of God, which has one of the great endings in history. And I second Walkabout, which is not a movie that goes anywhere you think it will.

Funny, I think "Wings of Desire" is one of the best films I've ever seen, and the ONLY film that is undeniably transcendently magical and mesmerizing. And I think "Paris, Texas" is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I guess lightning didn't strike twice.

As for Herzog's "Aguirre, Wrath of God"...if you haven't seen it, not only don't you know anything about film, you don't know anything life. I don't mean that as an insult to anyone, it's just a way of saying you can't NOT see it.

Leni Riefenstahl:

"Olympia" invented the sports documentary

"Triumph des Willens" is the most frightening movie I've ever seen

Haven't seen these mentioned seriously yet:

Ingmar Bergman - The 7th Seal, Persona, Wild Strawberries

Andrei Tarkovsky - Andrei Rublev, Stalker, The Sacrifice

Sergei Eisenstein - Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible 1 & 2

And a few more obscure, living directors:

Bela Tarr - The Werckmeinster Harmonies, Satantango

Gyorgy Palfi - Taxidermia, Hukkle

Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Cure, Pulse

Also, if you consider him 'foreign':

Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Holy Mountain, El Topo