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The Most Famous

FILM DIRECTORS from Chile

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This page contains a list of the greatest Chilean Film Directors. The pantheon dataset contains 1,581 Film Directors, 5 of which were born in Chile. This makes Chile the birth place of the 44th most number of Film Directors behind Egypt and Portugal.

Top 5

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

Photo of Raúl Ruiz

1. Raúl Ruiz (1941 - 2011)

With an HPI of 56.62, Raúl Ruiz is the most famous Chilean Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages on wikipedia.

Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino (French: Raoul Ruiz; 25 July 1941 – 19 August 2011) was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher whose work is best known in France. He directed more than 100 films.

Photo of Patricio Guzmán

2. Patricio Guzmán (1941 - )

With an HPI of 52.54, Patricio Guzmán is the 2nd most famous Chilean Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Patricio Guzmán Lozanes (born August 11, 1941) is a Chilean documentary film director. He is most known for his film trilogy The Battle of Chile (1975–1979) and more recently for another trilogy; Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015) and The Cordillera of Dreams (2019).

Photo of Alejandro Amenábar

3. Alejandro Amenábar (1972 - )

With an HPI of 50.57, Alejandro Amenábar is the 3rd most famous Chilean Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Alejandro Fernando Amenábar Cantos (born 31 March 1972) is a Chilean-Spanish film director, screenwriter and composer. He has won nine Goyas—including a Goya Award for Best Director for his 2001 film The Others— two European Film Awards and one Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for The Sea Inside among other honors. He has written (or co-written) the screenplays to all seven of his films and composed almost all of their soundtracks.

Photo of Pablo Larraín

4. Pablo Larraín (1976 - )

With an HPI of 42.91, Pablo Larraín is the 4th most famous Chilean Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Pablo Larraín Matte (Spanish pronunciation: [laraˈin]; born 19 August 1976) is a Chilean filmmaker. He is known for films such as the Academy Award-nominated films No (2012), Neruda (2016), Jackie (2016), and Spencer (2021). In 2017, Larraín and his brother Juan de Dios co-produced Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman, which was the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2021, Larrain directed the psychological romance horror miniseries Lisey's Story.

Photo of Claudio Miranda

5. Claudio Miranda (1972 - )

With an HPI of 33.58, Claudio Miranda is the 5th most famous Chilean Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Claudio Miranda, ASC (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈklawðjo miˈɾanda]) is a Chilean cinematographer. He is best known for his work on the Ang Lee-directed film Life of Pi (2012), for which Miranda won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and for the David Fincher-directed film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), which was the first film shot entirely digitally to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and the American Society of Cinematographers Award. He is also known for his collaborations with American director Joseph Kosinski. He is the second Chilean person to win an Academy Award.

Pantheon has 5 people classified as film directors born between 1941 and 1976. Of these 5, 4 (80.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living film directors include Patricio Guzmán, Alejandro Amenábar, and Pablo Larraín. The most famous deceased film directors include Raúl Ruiz.

Living Film Directors

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Deceased Film Directors

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