Best Of 2014: Todd's Top New Directors To Watch

Founder and Editor; Toronto, Canada (@AnarchistTodd)
With the year wrapped up one of my favorite exercises is not just to look back over the best films of the previous year but also to look forward - to ask which directors may have emerged in the past year that we will be seeing more interesting work from in the future. Who are the brightest talents? And 2014 was a remarkably strong year with a crop of fresh talent - fresh, in this case, meaning directors with no more than two feature films to their credit - across a variety of styles and genres from all around the world. My ten chosen directors represent four continents and - in a pleasant surprise - four of the ten are women, with both factors boding well for a diversity of voices moving forward.

In my top ten films list I excluded anything that I was directly involved with either personally or through my work at XYZ Films but I put no such restriction on this list given that - big shock - I really want to work with people that I find really talented. And making a list of ten people that I find really talented but don't want to work with would be ... well ... kind of pointless. So they're in there. The only limit is that directors who had already made my overall Top Ten - hello, Yann Demange - did not get listed here again. But without further ado, here they are.

Ana Lily Amirpour (USA) All you really need to know about A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night helmer Ana Lily Amirpour is the simple fact that her movie exists at all. I mean, there are a lot of reasons not to make a black and white, Farsi language vampire film with the US doubling for Iran and yet there it is, purely because Amirpour had the force of personality and vision to make it happen. That it exists and it's absolutely gorgeous to look at? Well, that tells you a little something extra, doesn't it?

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a girl walks home alone at nightAna Lily Amirpourcary murnioncootiesdodo dayaoFeltgerard johnstonehard to gethoneymoonhouseboundJason Bankerjenna bassjennifer kentjonathon milottkiah roache-turnerleigh janiaklove the one you lovethe babadooktwitch best of 2014violatorwyrmwoodzee ntuli

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