Top 30 Cinematographers

As you can read in my film philosophy, I value aesthetics in film. As a result, I always note a film’s director of photography (cinematography). Below are my 30 favorite cinematographers, and a list of my favorite films from each. Please feel free to check back on this list as it will be updated with changes periodically:

1. Christopher Doyle

• 2046
• Ashes of Time
• Chungking Express
• Days of Being Wild
• Fallen Angels
• Happy Together
• In the Mood for Love
• Ondine
• Paranoid Park

2. Emmanuel Lubezki

• Ali
• And Your Mama Too
• Children of Men
• Great Expectations
• A Little Princess
• The New World
• A Series of Unfortunate Events
• Sleepy Hollow
• Solo con tu pareja
• The Tree of Life

3. Robby Müller

• Alice in the Cities
• The American Friend
• Dead Man
• Down By Law
• Kings of the Road
• Notebook on Cities and Clothes
• Paris, Texas
• Wrong Move

4. Agnès Godard

• 35 Rhums
• Beau Travail
• Friday Night
• L’Intrus
• Nenette and Boni
• No Fear, No Die
• Trouble Every Day

5. Roger Deakins

• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Barton Fink
• Fargo
• The House of Sand and Fog
• No Country For Old Men
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• True Grit
• The Village

6. Sven Nykvist

• Autumn Sonata
• Cries and Whispers
• Face to Face
• Hour of the Wolf
• The Sacrifice
• Through a Glass Darkly
• The Virgin Spring
• Winter Light

7. Lee Ping-bin

• Café Lumière
• Dust in the Wind
• Flight of the Red Balloon
• Goodbye South Goodbye
• In the Mood for Love
• Millennium Mambo
• Three Times

8. Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein

• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
• Fata Morgana
• Heart of Glass
• Land of Silence and Darkness
• Nosferatu, the Vampyre
• Where the Green Ants Dream
• Woyzeck

9. Alwin Kuchler

• The Claim
• Code 46
• Hanna
• Movern Callar
• Ratcatcher
• Sunshine

10. Robert Elswit

• Boogie Nights
• Magnolia
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• Punch Drunk Love
• Salt
• Sydney
• There Will Be Blood

11. Steven Soderbergh

• Che: Part One
• Che: Part Two
• Contagion
• The Girlfriend Experience
• Haywire
• Solaris

12. Vilmos Zsigmond

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• The Crossing Guard
• Deliverance
• Images
• The Long Goodbye
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller

13. Russell Boyd

• Gallipoli
• The Last Wave
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Tender Mercies
• The Way Back

14. Bert Glennon

• Crime Wave
• Drums Along the Mohawk
• Rio Grande
• Stagecoach
• Underworld
• Young Mr. Lincoln

15. Peter Zeitlinger

• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams
• Encounters at the End of the World
• Little Dieter Needs to Fly
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
• Rescue Dawn
• Wings of Hope

16. Marcel Zyskind

• Code 46
• Genova
• In This World
• A Mighty Heart

17. Tim Orr

• All the Real Girls
• George Washington
• Snow Angels
• Undertow

18. Robert Burks

• I Confess
• North By Northwest
• Rear Window
• Strangers on a Train
• The Trouble with Harry
• Vertigo
• The Wrong Man

19. Eric Gautier

• Clean
• Into the Wild
• Irma Vep
• Sentimental Destinies
• Summer Hours

20. Slawomir Idziak

• The Double Life of Veronique
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• I Want You
• Three Colors: Blue

21. Nicholas Musuraca

• Cat People
• The Curse of the Cat People
• Out of the Past
• The Spiral Staircase

22. Harris Savides

• Birth
• Gerry
• Somewhere
• The Yards
• Zodiac

23. Nicolas Roeg

• Don’t Look Now
• Fahrenheit 451
• Performance
• Walkabout

24. Thomas Mauch

• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Even Dwarfs Started Small
• Fitzcarraldo
• Stroszek

25. Ernest Palmer

• 7th Heaven
• Broken Arrow
• City Girl
• The River
• Street Angel

26. Lance Acord

• Being John Malkovich
• Buffalo ’66
• Lost in Translation
• Where the Wild Things Are

27. Anthony Richmond

• Bad Timing
• Don’t Look Now
• The Indian Runner
• The Man Who Fell to Earth

28. Luciano Tovoli

• The Passenger
• Suspiria
• Tenebre
• Voyage in Time

29. Dante Spinotti

• Heat
• L.A. Confidential
• The Last of the Mohicans
• Manhunter
• Public Enemies

30. Gianni Di Venanzo

• L’Eclisse
• Il Grido
• Juliet of the Spirits
• La Notte