Here’s how we worked it out: i) We noted the number of films a director had in the 2010s top 250 list. (Directors…

We took a mathematical approach to ensure a balance between quantity and placement of films directed in the 2010s (ranking), and the quality of those films (rating).

By “top”, we mean the narrative feature film directors whose work in the 2010s, as ranked by the Letterboxd community, combined with their overall placing on Letterboxd’s Top 250 of the 2010s, signifies their excellence in the directing field.

The top 100 directors of the 2010s, according to the Letterboxd community (as at 1 January 2020). Jump to the bottom of this description to see the full list as text.

The top 100 directors of the 2010s, according to the Letterboxd community (as at 1 January 2020). Jump to the bottom of this description to see the full list as text.

By “top”, we mean the narrative feature film directors whose work in the 2010s, as ranked by the Letterboxd community, combined with their overall placing on Letterboxd’s Top 250 of the 2010s, signifies their excellence in the directing field.

We took a mathematical approach to ensure a balance between quantity and placement of films directed in the 2010s (ranking), and the quality of those films (rating).

Here’s how we worked it out:

i) We noted the number of films a director had in the 2010s top 250 list. (Directors had to have a minimum of two in the list, which we’ll publish tomorrow.)

ii) We took the average ranking of those films and combined that with the average rating of their complete 2010s filmographies.

iii) Average ratings are quoted to two decimal places or three where there were ties at that level of precision.

To be eligible, filmmakers must have directed at least three narrative feature films that had a theatrical or streaming release in the US between January 2010 and December 2019 (with exceptions for international films that had no US distribution). Films needed a minimum of 1,000 views on Letterboxd.

We made exceptions for directors who had made only two films, if both films made our list of top 250 narrative films of the 2010s. We counted directing teams as a single entity for the purposes of this list. Directors are represented on the list by their highest-rated film. Films that are in our narrative top 250 are bolded in the notes.

Documentaries, shorts, television, specials, and contributions to anthology films were excluded from consideration.

Observations:

—There are only two Best Director Oscar winners from the 2010s on the list: Damien Chazelle and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

—The most prolific directors on the list are Hong Sang-soo (14 films) and Sion Sono (11 films).

—The next busiest filmmakers are Xavier Dolan (8), Denis Villeneuve (7), Noah Baumbach, Asghar Farhadi and Richard Linklater (6), Olivier Assayas, Miguel Gomes, Anurag Kashyap, Yorgos Lanthimos, Pablo Larrain, David Mackenzie, Martin Scorsese and Taika Waititi (5 films each).

—There are eight women directors on the list: Greta Gerwig, Naoko Yamada, Céline Sciamma, Marielle Heller, Dee Rees, Andrea Arnold, Mia Hansen-Løve, and Kelly Reichardt.

—Seven directors are exclusively directors of animation: Lee Unkrich, Naoko Yamada, Tatsuya Oishi & Akiyuki Shinbo, Dean DeBlois, Mamoru Hosoda, Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Rich Moore.

—25 directors did not have a film that made the narrative top 250. Chad Stahelski is the highest-ranked director.

—29 of the directors work exclusively in languages other than English (not including directors such as Denis Villeneuve, Bong Joon-ho, and Xavier Dolan, who have made English-language films).

—17 of the directors made their feature film debuts in the 2010s.

—15 directors made the list in part because they directed two or more installments in a film series or franchise.

Who’s Missing?

Because we were talking fractions of a decimal point in many cases, we’d like to point out the directors who only just missed the cut: Guillermo del Toro, Gaspar Noé, Thomas Vinterberg, David Lowery, Claire Denis, Matthew Vaughn, Matteo Garrone, Naomi Kawase, Joss Whedon, Lenny Abrahamson, Terence Davies, Bertrand Bonello, J.J. Abrams, Alex Ross Perry, J.C. Chandor, David Robert Mitchell, Nicholas Winding Refn, François Ozon, Terrence Malick, Ben Wheatley, and Steven Spielberg.

Furthermore, these are the notable directors who did not make more than two eligible films this decade: Jordan Peele, Alfonso Cuarón, Chan-wook Park, George Miller, Spike Jonze, Michael Haneke, Alex Garland, Nadine Labaki, Kenneth Lonergan, Mike Mills, László Nemes, John Carney, Martin McDonagh, Chloé Zhao, Lynne Ramsay, Maren Ade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Jennifer Kent, Kathryn Bigelow, Drew Goddard, and Bennett Miller.

Then there were the notable directors whose average rating for films in the period wasn’t high enough: Steven Soderbergh, David O. Russell, Tom Hooper, Clint Eastwood, Stephen Frears, Susanne Bier, Ava DuVernay, Alexander Payne, Spike Lee, Todd Phillips, Todd McCarthy, Paul Schrader, Dan Gilroy, Adam McKay, Gareth Edwards, David Gordon Green, Werner Herzog, Ron Howard, Sir Peter Jackson, Sir Ridley Scott, David Michod, Jon Favreau, Paul Greengrass, Ang Lee, Sofia Coppola, Jason Reitman, Guy Ritchie, and Joe Wright.

The Full List:

1. Denis Villeneuve

2. Taika Waititi

3. Lee Chang-dong

4. Christopher Nolan

5. Wes Anderson

6. Martin Scorsese

7. Hirokazu Kore-eda

8. Nuri Bilge Ceylan

9. Quentin Tarantino

10. Mariano Llinás

11. Lee Unkrich

12. Greta Gerwig

13. Bong Joon-ho

14. Asghar Farhadi

15. Damien Chazelle

16. Benny & Josh Safdie

17. Barry Jenkins

18. Xavier Dolan

19. Noah Baumbach

20. Paul Thomas Anderson

21. Anurag Kashyap

22. Anthony & Joe Russo

23. Lav Diaz

24. Naoko Yamada

25. James Mangold

26. Robert Eggers

27. David Fincher

28. Ciro Guerra

29. Kleber Mendonça Filho

30. Yorgos Lanthimos

31. Gareth Evans

32. Pedro Almodóvar

33. Paweł Pawlikowski

34. Ari Aster

35. Edgar Wright

36. Alejandro González Iñárritu

37. Kang Hyoung-chul

38. Céline Sciamma

39. Sean Baker

40. Steve McQueen

41. Tatsuya Oishi & Akiyuki Shinbo

42. Abbas Kiarostami

43. Ryan Coogler

44. Andrew Haigh

45. Paul King

46. Andrey Zvyagintsev

47. Chad Stahelski

48. Dean Debois

49. Karim Aïnouz

50. Luca Guadagnino

51. Mamoru Hosoda

52. Christian Petzold

53. Rian Johnson

54. Jia Zhangke

55. Jacques Audiard

56. Joachim Trier

57. Ruben Östlund

58. Marielle Heller

59. S. Craig Zahler

60. Dee Rees

61. Ethan & Joel Coen

62. Trey Edward Shults

63. Sam Mendes

64. Miguel Gomes

65. Apichatpong Weerasethakul

66. Todd Haynes

67. Sion Sono

68. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardennes

69. Hwang Dong-hyuk

70. Andrea Arnold

71. Oriol Paulo

72. Hong Sang-soo

73. Jeff Nichols

74. Jean-Marc Vallée

75. Derek Cianfrance

76. Hiromasa Yonebayashi

77. Rich Moore

78. James Gunn

79. Richard Linklater

80. Sebastián Lelio

81. Matt Reeves

82. Jafar Panahi

83. Christopher McQuarrie

84. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

85. Pablo Larraín

86. Mia Hansen-Løve

87. Mike Leigh

88. David Mackenzie

89. Paolo Sorrentino

90. Felix van Groeningen

91. Kelly Reichardt

92. Jang Hoon

93. James Gray

94. Ken Loach

95. Dexter Fletcher

96. Jim Jarmusch

97. Olivier Assayas

98. Lars von Trier

99. Jeremy Saulnier

100. Peter Strickland

With thanks to Jack Moulton for his huge efforts in computing and compiling the results.