Filmmaker Kathryn Ann Bigelow was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of 2010 for her work on the Academy Award Best Director and Best Picture winning war film, The Hurt Locker.

Writer, director and producer Danny Boyle was born in Manchester in 1956 and is best known for directing feature length films like Shallow Grave, the Beach, Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting.

One of the stars of the 1990s generation of independent filmmakers, Richard Linklater has become known primarily for his wry, slice of life feature films that focus on youth culture and the initiation rites of “slackers”.

Noé has been inspired by Beatnik writer William Burroughs, and auteur filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, and claims that seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey when he was seven influenced his whole desire to be a director. His films share a common thread in the exploration of the ‘cinema of the body’

Darren Aronofsky is a well known American writer, director and film producer, who most recently released the biblical film Noah. His films are known for their oftentimes bleak, surreal and unsettling themes and style, pushing the boundaries of genre filmmaking.

Megan Ellison is one of the hottest young producers in Hollywood, famous not just for her lineage (daughter of Oracle co-founder, billionaire Larry Ellison) but for the quality of films she has been involved with since her explosive entry onto the film scene.

Don Hall and Chris Williams are the co-directors of the Oscar-award winning animated film, Big Hero 6, which won at the 87th Academy Awards. It also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and received nominations for the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film.

Laura Poitras is a journalist and documentary filmmaker and winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary for her film, Citizen Four.

Director of the Academy-Award winning film The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which claimed awards for Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Anderson has been involved with film for over 20 years making comedies and animated features.

González Iñárritu moved into filmmaking in the 1990s, starting Z Films, a studio that nurtured many Mexican directors. In 1999 he launched his first feature film, Amores perros, which won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes in 2000

The Coen brothers films mix intelligent, complex storylines with film noir, black humour and memorable characters and for three decades now they have been at the vanguard of some of the strangest, offbeat and powerful films in Hollywood.

Film auteur Martin Scorsese is one of the legendary writers and directors of the Hollywood film system, responsible for genre-defining films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and, more recently, the Wold of Wall Street.