French film directors

Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966), Weekend (1967) and Goodbye to Language (2014).During his early career as a film critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard criticised mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality", which de-emphasised innovation and experimentation. In response, he and like-minded critics began to make their own films, challenging the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema. Godard first received global acclaim for his 1960 feature Breathless, helping to establish the New Wave movement. His work makes use of frequent homages and references to film history, and often expressed his political views; he was an avid reader of existentialism and Marxist philosophy, and in 1969 formed the Dziga Vertov Group with other radical filmmakers to promote political works. After the New Wave, his politics were less radical, and his later films came to be about human conflict and artistic representation "from a humanist rather than Marxist perspective."Godard was married three times, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films, and later to his longtime partner Anne-Marie Miéville. His collaborations with Karina — which included such critically acclaimed films as Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964) and Pierrot le Fou (1965) — were called "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema" by Filmmaker magazine. In a 2002 Sight & Sound poll, Godard ranked third in the critics' top ten directors of all time. He is said to have "generated one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century." His work has been central to narrative theory and has "challenged both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary." In 2010, Godard was awarded an Academy Honorary Award.

François Roland Truffaut (UK: TROO-foh, TRUU-, US: troo-FOH; French: [fʁɑ̃swa ʁɔlɑ̃ tʁyfo]; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.
Truffaut's film The 400 Blows (1959) is a defining film of the French New Wave movement, and has four sequels: Antoine et Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut's 1973 film Day for Night earned him critical acclaim and several awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Soft Skin (1964), The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), The Last Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981). He played one of the main roles in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Truffaut wrote the book Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966), based on his interviews with film director Alfred Hitchcock during the 1960s.

René Clément (French: [ʁəne klemɑ̃]; 18 March 1913 – 17 March 1996) was a French film director and screenwriter. He is known for directing the films The Battle of the Rails (1946), Forbidden Games (1952), Gervaise (1956), Purple Noon (1960), and Is Paris Burning (1966). He received numerous accolades including five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and the Honorary César in 1984.

George Paul Breakston (January 22, 1920 – May 21, 1973) was a French-American actor, producer and film director, active in Hollywood from his days as a child actor in Andy Hardy films in the 1930s (where he played the character Beezy), to a period as an independent producer/director in the 1950s.

Juliet Berto (16 January 1947 – 10 January 1990), born Annie Jamet, was a French actress, director and screenwriter.
A member of the same loose group of student radicals as Anne Wiazemsky, she first appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and would go on to appear in many of Godard's subsequent films, including La Chinoise, Week End, Le Gai Savoir, and Vladimir et Rosa. She later became a muse for the French New Wave director Jacques Rivette, starring in Out 1 and Celine and Julie Go Boating.
In the 1980s, she became a screenwriter and film director. Her film Cap Canaille (1983) was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1987, she was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. She died of breast cancer six days before her 43rd birthday.

Henry de La Falaise, Marquis de La Coudraye (born James Henri Le Bailly de la Falaise; February 11, 1898 – April 10, 1972), was a French nobleman, translator, film director, film producer, sometime actor, and war hero who was best known for his high-profile marriages to two leading Hollywood actresses.

Aurélien Wiik (born 24 September 1980) is a French actor and filmmaker. He is the son of a Norwegian father and of the French actress Françoise Deldick.

Étienne Chatiliez (born 17 June 1952) is a French film director. He was born in Roubaix, France.
After starting out directing many advertising clips, he is now a well-known director of feature-length films with some success.

Jean Alexandre Louis Promio (9 July 1868 – 24 December 1926) was a French film photographer and director. He is mentioned as a pioneer in film and was the director for Sweden's first Newsreel. The newsreel was shown for King Oscar II:s arrival at the General Art and Industrial Exposition on 15 May 1897.

Alexandre Promio came from an Italian family that moved to France and resided in Lyon. During his time as an assistant to an optician in Lyon, he witnessed the first presentation of the medium of moving pictures cinematograph. Promio was interested in the art of photography, and in March 1896 left his work at the optician to start working for Auguste and Louis Lumière. After just some time at the work he became the boss for the film unit and got the responsibility for the education of the first cinematograph-operators.His first assignment was to present and marketing of the new media worldwide. Promio visited several cities between April 1896 and September 1897. The first trip went to Madrid where he demonstrated the moving pictures on 13 May 1896 On 7 July he did a film demonstration for the Tsar Nikolaj II of Russia and the empress of Saint Petersburg, after that he visited England, Germany and Hungary. In September 1896, he arrived in the US, and filmed the first films of Chicago. In Italy he on 25 October 1896 filmed the city of Venice from a Gondola. The film had its premiere on 13 December 1897 in Lyon under the title of Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau which shows the short trip of Canal Grande. It was most likely the world's first moving film, also the first being filmed by a moving camera.After 1898 he did not do anymore travels and resided permanently in Lyon France where he continued to be an employee of Lumière. In 1907 he filmed for Pathé and between 1914 and 1915 he was a soldier in the first world war. After his duty in the war he became a still photographer and film photographer to the Algerian government, there he created 3000 photographs and 38 documentary films. He returned to France sick and resided in Asnières-sur-Seine near Paris. He died in his home on Christmas eve 1926. His death however was not announced until four months after.

Prosper Désiré "Georges" Péclet (27 July 1897 – 11 January 1974) was a French actor, director, and screenwriter.