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The Most Famous

FILM DIRECTORS from Belgium

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This page contains a list of the greatest Belgian Film Directors. The pantheon dataset contains 1,581 Film Directors, 9 of which were born in Belgium. This makes Belgium the birth place of the 31st most number of Film Directors behind Mexico and Israel.

Top 9

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Belgian Film Directors of all time. This list of famous Belgian Film Directors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Agnès Varda

1. Agnès Varda (1928 - 2019)

With an HPI of 67.31, Agnès Varda is the most famous Belgian Film Director.  Her biography has been translated into 49 different languages on wikipedia.

Agnès Varda (French: [aɲɛs vaʁda] ; born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist with French and Greek origins. Varda's work employed location shooting in an era when the limitations of sound technology made it easier and more common to film indoors, with constructed sets and painted backdrops of landscapes, rather than outdoors, on location. Her use of non-professional actors was also unconventional for 1950s French cinema. Varda's feature film debut was La Pointe Courte (1955), followed by Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), one of her most notable narrative films, Vagabond (1985), and Kung Fu Master (1988). Varda was also known for her work as a documentarian with such works as Black Panthers (1968), The Gleaners and I (2000), The Beaches of Agnès (2008), Faces Places (2017), and her final film, Varda by Agnès (2019). Director Martin Scorsese described Varda as "one of the Gods of Cinema". Among several other accolades, Varda received an Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first woman to win the award, a Golden Lion for Vagabond at the 1985 Venice Film Festival, an Academy Honorary Award, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Faces Places, becoming the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Oscar. In 2017, she became the first female director to win an honorary Oscar.

Photo of Chantal Akerman

2. Chantal Akerman (1950 - 2015)

With an HPI of 56.63, Chantal Akerman is the 2nd most famous Belgian Film Director.  Her biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Chantal Anne Akerman (French: [ʃɑ̃tal akɛʁman]; 6 June 1950 – 5 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York.She is best known for her films Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1976), and Je Tu Il Elle (1974); the first of these was ranked the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's 2022 "Greatest Films of All Time" critics poll, making her the first woman to top the poll. The latter two films also rank lower in the same poll.According to multiple critics and film scholars, Akerman's influence on feminist and avant-garde cinema is substantial, with at least one scholar calling her "one of the most significant directors of our times."

Photo of Jacques Feyder

3. Jacques Feyder (1885 - 1948)

With an HPI of 55.34, Jacques Feyder is the 3rd most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Jacques Feyder (French: [fɛ.dɛʁ]; 21 July 1885 – 24 May 1948) was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the US, Britain and Germany. He was a director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 1930s he became associated with the style of poetic realism in French cinema. He adopted French nationality in 1928.

Photo of Jaco Van Dormael

4. Jaco Van Dormael (1957 - )

With an HPI of 52.11, Jaco Van Dormael is the 4th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His films especially focus on a respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people with mental and physical disabilities. Van Dormael spent his childhood travelling around Europe, before going on to study filmmaking at the INSAS in Brussels, where he wrote and directed his first short film, Maedeli la brèche (1981), which received the Honorary Foreign Film Award at the Student Academy Awards. Van Dormael's feature debut, Toto le héros (1991), won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Five years later, Le huitième jour (1996) played at Cannes, where his two leading actors, Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne, were jointly awarded the prize for Best Actor. His third feature film, Mr. Nobody (2009), won six Magritte Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.

Photo of André Delvaux

5. André Delvaux (1926 - 2002)

With an HPI of 51.02, André Delvaux is the 5th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

André Albert Auguste Delvaux (French: [dɛlvo]; 21 March 1926 – 4 October 2002) was a Belgian film director. He co-founded the film school INSAS in 1962 and is regarded as the founder of the Belgian national cinema. Adapting works by writers such as Johan Daisne, Julien Gracq and Marguerite Yourcenar, he received international attention for directing magic realist films. Delvaux received the Louis Delluc Prize for Rendezvous at Bray (1971) and the André Cavens Award for Woman Between Wolf and Dog (1979) and The Abyss (1988). The king of Belgium made him a baron in 1996. The Académie André Delvaux is named after him and he posthumously received the first Honorary Magritte Award in 2011.

Photo of Raoul Servais

6. Raoul Servais (1928 - 2023)

With an HPI of 48.10, Raoul Servais is the 6th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Raoul Servais (1 May 1928 – 17 March 2023) was a Belgian filmmaker, animator and comics artist. He was born in Ostend, Belgium, and is a fundamental figure of the Belgian animation scene, as well as the founder of the animation faculty of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK).Servais was best known for the animated film, Harpya, for which he won a Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. Servais received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Festival of Animated Film - Animafest Zagreb in 2016. At the 9th Magritte Awards, he received an Honorary Magritte Award from the Académie André Delvaux. In total, Servais won about 60 film prizes. Homages with retrospectives were organized in Paris, Madrid, Istanbul, Montreal, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and St Petersburg.Servais died at his home in Leffinge on 17 March 2023, at the age of 94.

Photo of Ulu Grosbard

7. Ulu Grosbard (1929 - 2012)

With an HPI of 46.32, Ulu Grosbard is the 7th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Israel "Ulu" Grosbard (January 9, 1929 – March 19, 2012) was a Belgian-born, naturalized American theater and film director and film producer.

Photo of Benoît Lamy

8. Benoît Lamy (1945 - 2008)

With an HPI of 40.72, Benoît Lamy is the 8th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Benoît Lamy (French pronunciation: [bənwa lami]; 19 September 1945 – 15 April 2008) was a Belgian film director, best known for his picture Home Sweet Home (1973).

Photo of Felix van Groeningen

9. Felix van Groeningen (1977 - )

With an HPI of 36.76, Felix van Groeningen is the 9th most famous Belgian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Felix van Groeningen (Dutch: [ˈfeːlɪks fɑŋ ˈɣrunɪŋə(n)]; born 1 November 1977) is a Belgian film director and screenwriter. He is known for The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) and Belgica (2016), with the former being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards. He made his English-language debut with the biographical drama Beautiful Boy (2018) and was awarded with the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize for The Eight Mountains (2022).

Pantheon has 9 people classified as film directors born between 1885 and 1977. Of these 9, 2 (22.22%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living film directors include Jaco Van Dormael and Felix van Groeningen. The most famous deceased film directors include Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, and Jacques Feyder.

Living Film Directors

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Deceased Film Directors

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Which Film Directors were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 7 most globally memorable Film Directors since 1700.