These 15 Directors Made the Best Directorial Debut Movies in Film History
Everyone in show business has to start somewhere, and while many of those starts are of the lower-profile, slower-moving variety, a rare few burst on the scene to immediate acclaim. That includes directors, some of whom kick off their feature film careers helming small movies that fly under the radar before finally putting out a widespread smash—like Nora Ephron, whose 1992 directorial debut, the relatively little-known This Is My Life, was soon eclipsed by the iconic rom-com Sleepless in Seattle—while others open with an undeniable, must-watch hit.
Here, we’ve rounded up 15 directors whose debuts fall in the latter category, from now-well-established names like Spike Lee and Sofia Coppola to up-and-comers like Celine Song and A.V. Rockwell.
'Past Lives' (2023) – Celine Song
It may be hard to believe, but Past Lives, which earned nominations at the 2024 Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (and deserved even more), was the first film Celine Song had ever directed. Before putting out the heart-wrenching movie about revisiting a childhood romance—which Song also wrote—she'd written two plays and worked on the writing staff of the Amazon Prime series The Wheel of Time. She’s already got her second feature lined up: The Materialists, another A24 project reportedly about a matchmaker’s complex love life starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal.
'Lady Bird' (2017) – Greta Gerwig
Technically, Greta Gerwig co-directed the 2008 indie film Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg, but her solo directorial debut didn’t come until 2017's Lady Bird. The coming-of-age story sees Saoirse Ronan in the titular role and earned five Oscar noms, including a Best Director nod for Gerwig. That marked a major turning point in her career: Until then, while she’d written several features, Gerwig also typically acted in them, too. Since Lady Bird, however, she’s largely stayed behind the camera, as director of Little Women, Barbie, and a pair of upcoming Chronicles of Narnia films, and as writer of next year’s live-action adaptation of Snow White.
'Molly’s Game' (2017) – Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin’s Hollywood career spanned two decades before he finally tried on a director’s hat. During that time, in addition to serving as writer and creator of several popular shows like The West Wing and The Newsroom, he wrote seven feature films, including A Few Good Men, The Social Network, and Moneyball. His first directing credit arrived in 2017 with Molly’s Game, a biopic of so-called “poker princess” Molly Bloom starring Jessica Chastain—which Sorkin also wrote, earning him a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nom—and was quickly followed by a few more, for The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos.
'She’s Gotta Have It' (1986) – Spike Lee
The first full-length “Spike Lee Joint” was this 1986 dramedy about a young woman (played by Tracy Camilla Johns) juggling three suitors, one of whom was played by Lee himself. The movie earned Lee the first-ever Best First Feature trophy at the Independent Spirit Awards and was adapted into a Netflix series more than 30 years later. It also kickstarted his career, which now includes two dozen film directing credits, stretching from Do the Right Thing to Inside Man to BlacKkKlansman, which finally earned him his long-overdue first Oscar, for Best Adapted Screenplay.
'Fruitvale Station' (2013) – Ryan Coogler
Ryan Coogler started writing and directing short films in college and made his feature-length debut before he was 30, with 2013’s Fruitvale Station. The intense film recounts the final hours of Oscar Grant (played by Michael B. Jordan), a young Black man who was killed by a police officer in the titular San Francisco BART station in 2009. The movie won Coogler the award for Best First Film at the Cannes Film Festival and Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards, among many other accolades, and it also kicked off a long-running collaboration with Jordan, who Coogler would go on to direct in Creed, both of Marvel’s Black Panther films, and his next project, an untitled supernatural horror film.
'Booksmart' (2019) – Olivia Wilde
Wilde is another Hollywood mainstay who took her time before dabbling in directing—and scored major acclaim for that first feature. Her teen comedy Booksmart arrived in 2019 after she’d racked up more than 15 years’ worth of film and TV acting credits, plus back-to-back music video directing credits in 2016. Like several of her peers on this list, Wilde earned the Independent Spirit Awards’ Best First Feature for Booksmart. She followed it up with 2022’s Don’t Worry Darling, which premiered amid a cloud of offscreen drama and received much more mixed reviews.
'Aftersun' (2022) – Charlotte Wells
Before making her full-length directorial debut with 2022’s Aftersun, Charlotte Wells produced a handful of short films and wrote and directed a trio of shorts while earning her master’s at New York University. Her first feature stars Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as a father and daughter on their last vacation together; the emotional film not only sparked many conversations about Wells’ relationship with her own father, who died when she was 16, but also earned her a handful of high-profile awards related to her directing—yes, including the Indie Spirits’ Best First Feature—alongside an Oscar nomination for Mescal.
'A Thousand and One' (2023) – A.V. Rockwell
Among the biggest snubs of the 2024 Oscars was A Thousand and One, which deserved recognition in so many categories but was unfortunately shut out of all. Stretching over the course of a decade, it stars Teyana Taylor as a single mother in New York City who kidnaps her son out of the foster care system to raise him herself. It marked the directorial debut of A.V. Rockwell, who also wrote the film and had previously worked as a writer and director on short films, including Alicia Keys’ The Gospel. Despite the Oscars snubs, Rockwell earned plenty of other awards and nominations for A Thousand and One, including first-time feature trophies from the Indie Spirit and Gotham awards, and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for drama.
'The Lost Daughter' (2021) – Maggie Gyllenhaal
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s parents are both writers and directors, so it was perhaps only a matter of time before the award-winning actress stepped behind the camera. She finally did so almost 30 years into her career, with 2021’s The Lost Daughter, which she both directed and wrote, based on Elena Ferrante’s 2006 novel of the same name. The psychological drama stars Olivia Colman as a woman whose encounter with a young mother (Dakota Johnson) while on vacation sparks memories of her own experiences as a mother decades before, with Jessie Buckley playing her in flashbacks. In addition to acting nods for Colman and Buckley, it earned Gyllenhaal a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nom. Now, she's filming her next writing and directing project, an adaptation of Bride of Frankenstein dubbed The Bride! and starring Buckley in the titular role.
'Get Out' (2017) – Jordan Peele
Jordan Peele made a major career pivot in 2017. Until then, he’d made a name for himself in ridiculously goofy sketch comedy but with the release of his directorial debut Get Out that year, Peele set off on a new path as a highly regarded auteur filmmaker. The psychological thriller follows Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris on an increasingly terrifying trip to meet his girlfriend’s parents, and it earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay for Peele, who went on to become the first Black winner of the last of those. He’s since followed it up with directing credits on two more hit horror films, 2019’s Us and 2022’s Nope.
'Eighth Grade' (2018) – Bo Burnham
Like Peele before him, Bo Burnham had built up a successful career as a comedian before shifting gears and moving behind the camera. He did so with 2018’s Eighth Grade, an incredibly relatable film starring Elsie Fisher as an awkward middle-schooler, which Burnham also wrote and earned him several award nominations and wins for both directing and writing. Since then, apart from a supporting role in 2020’s Promising Young Woman and his pandemic-era comedy special Inside, Burnham has largely stuck to directing and producing, focusing specifically on the standup specials of other comedians, including Jerrod Carmichael, Kate Berlant, and Lil Rel Howery.
'A Star Is Born' (2018) – Bradley Cooper
Longtime actor Bradley Cooper took a big swing with his directorial debut—with the hefty task of remaking A Star Is Born for the fourth time—and he certainly didn’t miss. The 2018 film, in which he starred opposite Lady Gaga, was a box office smash and earned eight nominations at the Academy Awards, albeit no Best Director nod for Cooper himself, which he later said “embarrassed” him. He tried again with 2023’s Maestro, which he also co-wrote and starred in as legendary composer Leonard Bernstein—but alas, once again, the film’s seven Oscar noms failed to include a directing nod for Cooper. Better luck next time, Brad!
'One Night in Miami…' (2020) – Regina King
In yet another instance of a widely acclaimed actor trying directing on for size, Regina King made her feature-length directorial debut in 2020, more than 30 years into her Hollywood career, after she’d served as director for more than a dozen episodes of TV shows including Scandal, This Is Us, and Insecure. Her film debut arrived with One Night in Miami…, based on a stage play of the same name, which imagines a 1964 meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. It was short-listed for a trio of Oscars and King received several nominations for her directing, including from the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, and the NAACP Image Awards, among others.
'Promising Young Woman' (2020) – Emerald Fennell
Emerald Fennell got her start as an actor in the mid-aughts and built a strong career with largely supporting roles in movies like Anna Karenina and The Danish Girl, and shows including Call the Midwife and The Crown. She went on to serve as showrunner of the second season of the hit series Killing Eve in 2019, and a year later made her directorial debut with the (very intense) black comedy Promising Young Woman, which stars Carey Mulligan as a young woman out for revenge for her best friend’s sexual assault and subsequent death by suicide. Fennell won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for her work writing the film and was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture that year, as well. Her next project was 2023’s Saltburn, which she wrote, directed, and produced. While Salutburn was overlooked at this year’s Oscars, it earned dozens more nominations elsewhere.
'The Virgin Suicides' (1999) – Sofia Coppola
As an heir to the Coppola family legacy, it’s no surprise that Sofia Coppola has spent much of her life carving out her own piece of Hollywood success. After appearing in several of her father Francis Ford Coppola’s films throughout her childhood, Coppola stepped behind the camera and made her directorial debut in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides. The drama, which Coppola adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel of the same name, has since become a cult classic, and it also kicked off her long-running collaboration with Kirsten Dunst, who has appeared in three of the eight films written and directed by Coppola.
