Alfred Hitchcock, 1960
'The Master pushes the envelope' Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
Joseph Losey, 1963
'The American exile Losey, the emerging playwright Pinter and the ambivalent actor Bogarde interrogate the new Britain' Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
Stanley Kubrick, 1968
'A quantum leap for science fiction by the most revolutionary figure to settle here since Karl Marx' Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Arthur Penn, 1967
'The Zeitgeist as gangster film' Photograph: PR
Bob Rafelson, 1970
'Jack Nicholson in a great road movie' Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
Wim Wenders, 1974
'Raw harbinger of new German cinema'
Photograph: The Ronald Grant Archive
Peter Weir, 1975
'Australian cinema establishes itself on the world scene' Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Woody Allen, 1977
'The disciple of Bob Hope and Ingmar Bergman invents the relationship movie' Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Martin Scorsese, 1980
The peak of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro's partnership Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Richard Attenborough, 1982
Ben Kingsley is indelible in a film that realised a dream of one of British cinema's greatest figures Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
David Lynch, 1986
'After The Elephant Man, and the overblown science fiction film Dune, Lynch amazed us with this surreal masterpiece' Photograph: Cinetext/Allstar
Louis Malle, 1987
'Malle finally confronts his childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied France' Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Chen Kaige, 1993
'The new Chinese cinema at its most exquisite' Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar
Quentin Tarantino, 1994
'A landmark in popular, personal post-modernist cinema' Photograph: Everett/Rex Features
Ken Loach, 1995
'The Spanish Civil War finds its perfect director' Photograph: Everett/Rex Features
Pedro Almodóvar, 1999
'The last masterpiece of the century' Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Christopher Nolan, 2000
'The first major talent to emerge this century' Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Ang Lee, 2005
'A crucial contribution to the renewal of the western that began with Dances With Wolves Photograph: Everett/Rex Features
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006
'The most important German film since reunification' Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
Brad Bird/Jan Pinkava, 2007
'A 20-year sierra of fine feature-length cartoons reaches its Mont Blanc' Photograph: Disney/AP
