Postmodernist filmmakers

Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker, animator, and artist. He is known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Dark Shadows (2012), as well as the television series Wednesday (2022). Burton also directed the superhero films Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), the sci-fi film Planet of the Apes (2001), the fantasy-drama Big Fish (2003), the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and the fantasy films Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016).

Sofia Carmina Coppola (, born May 14, 1971) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actress. The daughter of filmmakers Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed crime drama film, The Godfather (1972). Coppola later appeared in a supporting role in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and portrayed Mary Corleone, the daughter of Michael Corleone, in The Godfather Part III (1990). Her performance in the latter film was severely criticized, and she turned her attention to filmmaking.

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, dark humor, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, eclectic soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, alternate history, and features of neo-noir film.

Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969) is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. His films are noted for their surreal, melodramatic, and often disturbing elements, usually based in psychological horror and drama.

Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English director, screenwriter and producer, known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive utilization of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a signature editing style that includes transitions, whip pans and wipes.

Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, voice actor, animator, writer, producer, director, and composer. He is known for co-creating South Park (1997–present) and co-developing The Book of Mormon (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. Parker was interested in film and music as a child and at high school, and attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he met Stone. The two collaborated on various short films, and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Los Angeles, Anderson developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. He made his feature-film debut with Hard Eight (1996). He found critical and commercial success with Boogie Nights (1997), set in the Golden Age of Porn, and received further accolades with Magnolia (1999), an ensemble piece set in the San Fernando Valley, and Punch-Drunk Love (2002), a romantic comedy-drama film.

Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning movies. He began his career as a comedy writer on Sid Caesar's comedy variety program, Your Show of Shows, working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. He also began writing material for television, published several books featuring short stories, and writing humor pieces for The New Yorker. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes), and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, even earning a Grammy Award nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply, Woody Allen. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian.

Adam Spiegel (born October 22, 1969), known professionally as Spike Jonze (pronounced as "Jones"), is an American filmmaker, photographer, musician, and actor, whose work includes film, television, music videos, and commercials.

Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1993), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013). For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.