If you’re looking for good recommendations for anything, you always want to get advice from an expert. So, that means if you want to know what up-and-coming directors are going to shape cinema in the next decade, you probably wouldn’t be wrong to ask filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. And that’s exactly what Sight & Sound did in a recent article, where the “Parasite” director lists 20 directors that he believes will be pivotal in the next decade.
As Director Bong puts it, discussing the current works of a filmmaker is vital for predicting the future “because, when we watched Wong Kar Wai’s second film ‘Days of Being Wild’ (1990), we might have already dreamed of ‘In the Mood for Love’ (2000) in our minds. Or… when we watched ‘Blood Simple’ (1985) by the Coen brothers, we might have already been experiencing ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007), which would come two decades later.”
So, in the list of 20 filmmakers for the 2020s, Bong Joon Ho doesn’t offer predictions of what’s to come, but instead, he highlights the works that are already made, in hopes that we will be seeing some even greater films in the future.
As for who Bong picks to include in his top 20, there are many names that frequent readers of The Playlist will already know. Obviously, any list of the best up-and-coming filmmakers has to include folks such as Ari Aster (“Hereditary” and “Midsommar”), Robert Eggers (“The Witch” and “The Lighthouse”), Jennifer Kent (“Babadook” and “The Nightingale”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out” and “Us”), and Chloé Zhao (“The Rider” and the upcoming “Eternals”). However, you have to expect that Bong isn’t going to rely on the names that everyone is familiar with. No, he also lists some folks that aren’t necessarily household names…yet.
READ MORE: 52 Films Directed By Women To Watch In 2020
Ali Abbasi (“Border”), Bi Gan (“Long Day’s Journey Into Night”), Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”), Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”), and Francis Lee (“God’s Own Country”) are all names that have one or two films under their belt but will surely be filmmakers that we will hear much more about in the future.
For the entire list, you can go to the Sight & Sound article.