Chris Joseph Columbus is an American filmmaker. Born in Spangler, Pennsylvania, Columbus studied film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where he developed an interest in filmmaking. After writing screenplays for several teen comedies in the mid-1980s, including Gremlins, The Goonies, and Young Sherlock Holmes, he made his directorial debut with a teen adventure, Adventures in Babysitting (1987). Columbus gained recognition soon after with the highly successful Christmas comedy Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016); and the romantic comedy Hit Man (2023).
Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids is a 2004 Indian-American documentary film about the children of sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's red light district. The widely acclaimed film, written and directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, won a string of accolades including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005.
The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical far-left Communist organization Weather Underground.
Wordplay is a 2006 documentary film directed by Patrick Creadon. It features Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, crossword constructor Merl Reagle, and many other noted crossword solvers and constructors. The second half of the movie is set at the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT), where the top solvers compete for a prize of $4000. Wordplay was the best reviewed documentary film of 2006, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
The In-Laws is a 2003 American action comedy film starring Michael Douglas, Albert Brooks, Robin Tunney, Ryan Reynolds and Candice Bergen. The film is a remake of the original 1979 cult classic of the same name. Scenes for the 2003 film were shot on location in Chicago. The film was a box office failure and received mixed to negative reviews.
The Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing critically and commercially successful animated films. The ten feature films associated with this period are The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), and Tarzan (1999).
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is a 2008 Danish documentary film directed by Anders Østergaard. It follows the Saffron Revolution against the military regime in Burma. The "VJ" in the title stands for "video journalists." Some of it was filmed on hand-held cameras. The footage was smuggled out of the country, physically or over the Internet. Other parts of it were reconstructed, which caused controversy.
Cairo Time is a 2009 film by Canadian director Ruba Nadda. It is a romantic drama about a brief, unexpected love interest that catches two people completely off-guard. The film won the award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival 2009.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is a 2010 documentary film about the life and career of comedian Joan Rivers, also featuring Melissa Rivers, Don Rickles and Kathy Griffin.
Brighton Rock is a 2010 British crime film written and directed by Rowan Joffé and loosely based on Graham Greene's 1938 novel of the same name. The film stars Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Serkis, John Hurt, Sean Harris and Helen Mirren.
The Island President is a 2011 documentary film about the efforts of then-President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed to tackle rising sea levels resulting from climate change. Produced by Actual Films and directed by Jon Shenk, the film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. The film received critical acclaim and won the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award for Documentaries.
Thomas McKay Martin Jr., known professionally as T. J. Martin, is an American filmmaker. Martin's film Undefeated (2011), for which he was co-director, co-editor, and co-cinematographer, won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making Martin the first film director of African-American descent to win an Academy Award for a feature-length film.
Gimme the Loot is a 2012 American comedy film written and directed by Adam Leon. The film competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival in 2012. It was released on March 22, 2013, in the U.S.
20 Feet from Stardom is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Gil Friesen, a music industry executive whose curiosity to know more about the lives of background singers inspired the making of the film. Using archival footage and new interviews, it details the behind-the-scenes experiences of such backup singers as Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, and Tata Vega. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards, 23 years after In the Shadow of the Stars (1991), a similar documentary that focused on the members of an opera chorus, won the same award.
The Square is a 2013 Egyptian-American documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which depicts the Egyptian Crisis until 2013, starting with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards. It also won three Emmy Awards at the 66th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, out of four for which it was nominated.
Seymour: An Introduction is a 2014 American documentary film. Directed by Ethan Hawke, the film documents the career of Seymour Bernstein, a classical pianist who abandoned his rising career as a concert pianist at age 50 to retreat to a more modest, private life as a music educator and composer. The film premiered at the 2014 Telluride Film Festival, and was released on March 13, 2015, by IFC Films. As of May 2023, it has a 100% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
Nas: Time Is Illmatic is a 2014 documentary film directed by One9 and produced by One9, Erik Parker and Anthony Saleh. The film recounts the circumstances leading up to Nas' 1994 debut album Illmatic. Released on the 20th anniversary of Illmatic, the film includes interviews with Nas, his brother and father, and figures from the East Coast hip hop scene. Nas: Time Is Illmatic premiered during the opening night of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, on April 16, 2014. The project received a grant from Tribeca All Access and additional funding from the Ford Foundation.
Cartel Land is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Matthew Heineman about the Mexican Drug War, especially vigilante groups fighting Mexican drug cartels. The film focuses on Tim "Nailer" Foley, the leader of Arizona Border Recon, and Dr. José Mireles, a Michoacán-based physician who leads the Autodefensas. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2016.
