László Nemes — “Son Of Saul”
Cannes tends to favor established auteurs rather than newcomers in its official competition, so just making the cut made László Nemes one to watch well before his debut feature won the Grand Prix from the Coen Brothers’ jury. Born in Hungary but raised in Paris, Nemes is a second-generation filmmaker (his father András Jeles worked in theater and cinema) who worked as Béla Tarr’s assistant on the two-year production process for “The Man From London” a decade ago, before heading to NYU to study directing. His short “With A Little Patience” was selected for Venice with two more following, but it’s his feature debut, the staggering “Son Of Saul,” a verité look at a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz who discovers his son among the victims, directed with enormous visceral power and technical skill, that’s put him on the map. Capturing the horror of the camps like few filmmakers before and displaying a gift for camerawork both realistic and with a heightened terror that Inarritu and Lubezki would be jealous of, it’s sure to win him a Foreign Language Oscar nod and could lead to Best Picture and Best Director nominations as well, while he’s currently developing his second feature “Sunset,” a thriller set in Budapest in 1910.
Bill Pohlad — “Love and Mercy”
As we hope this list conveys, not all directorial “breakouts” in any given year are about first-timers making their first zero-budget, no-name-actor indie film and getting a little festival heat. Some breakout filmmakers are even the sons of self-made billionaires who have already enjoyed an successful producing career, including producing a Best Picture winner (“12 Years A Slave“). It would be easy to dismiss Pohlad as preternaturally blessed, well-connected and able to tootle around with whatever vanity project he wants. But the problem is that “Love and Mercy,” his biopic of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, is phenomenal. Eliciting career-bests from Paul Dano and Elizabeth Banks and reclaiming John Cusack from his Nic Cage-esque B-movie purgatory, the film, scripted by Oren Moverman, is a moving, compelling and hugely entertaining portrait of a troubled man at two different stages in his life. And goddamn if it’s not brilliantly directed, with a great sense of pace and drama, but also a light touch and a knack for communicating what is really invisible: the nature of musical genius. Here’s hoping Pohlad’s busy production slate doesn’t stop him getting back behind the camera again soon.
Damian Szifron — “Wild Tales”
There’s a good reason we call it “breakthrough” directors, and not “rookie” or “debut,” and that’s so we can include people like Szifron, whose entry on this list probably seems a little strange to anyone familiar with Argentinian media. As a writer and director of TV and film, Szifron has been at work in his native country since the late ’90s, and prior to last year was best known for his immensely popular and successful TV show “Los Simuladores.” However, his wickedly funny, acerbic, well-shot anthology film “Wild Tales,” made up of six unconnected segments, each playing as a sort of dark-hearted riff on the absurdities of modern life (a little like a present-day take on Roald Dahl‘s “Tales of the Unexpected“), was his biggest hit to date, becoming the highest grossing film of all time in Argentina. But it was also an unusual kind of Cannes breakout, as following its very enthusiastic reception at the 2014 festival, the film gathered gentle momentum internationally throughout the year, playing the festival circuit and sweeping the boards at Argentina’s national film awards, before being shortlisted for the foreign-language Oscar in 2015 and getting a US release in February. That international breakout status has recently seen Szifron, who has a lovely, confident touch with black humor and deadpan comedic performances, take over the director’s chair from Peter Berg on 2017’s “The Six Billion Dollar Man” with Mark Wahlberg. He’d already been tapped to write the script, but now he’ll be helming too, indicating the level of confidence TWC-Dimension has in the Argentinian director.
Sam Taylor-Johnson — “Fifty Shades of Grey”
Whatever you think of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” there can be no denying that Sam Taylor-Johnson made the film one of the highest profile trans-Atlantic breakouts of the year. Only her second feature after her little-seen but pretty decent John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy,” Taylor-Johnson was best known as part of the same “Young British Artists” grouping that also includes Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. So she is hardly the natural first choice for a potential franchise-starting Hollywood “bonkbuster” and yet, especially given the horrible source material, she did a remarkably competent job. A lot is due to the clever adaptation by screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who avoided most of the excesses of the book’s terrible dialogue (“I’m fifty shades of fucked up,” notwithstanding) and a really quite good turn by Dakota Johnson, Taylor-Johnson’s film is infinitely better than E.L James novel. And in the only language that Hollywood understands, she’s now a female director whose second film, off a budget of $40m, has made well over half a billion dollars ($570m) worldwide. And now that we’re certain it won’t be the “Fifty Shades” sequel, we’re free to look forward to whatever she does next.
S. Craig Zahler — “Bone Tomahawk”
Every year, in addition to the indie darlings that end up mostly populating lists like these, a few legitimate genre titles crop up. Recently, we’ve had the likes of “The Guest,” “Cold In July,” “It Follows” “John Wick” and so on filling that gap, and in 2015 we got S. Craig Zahler’s brilliant western/horror hybrid, which is funny, gross-out revolting and surprisingly moving all at once. For western fans, Zahler’s debut film, made from his own script, provides just enough of those archetypes as a motley crew of dudes (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins and Matthew Fox) embark on a quixotic rescue mission to a nest of sub-human cannibal “troglodytes.” But his film also gently subverts the form, as the heroes’ acts of heroism never turn out quite as they’d planned, or quite as genre convention dictates they should. Mostly, this is a showcase for a perfect cast to rise to the occasion of a crackling, witty script that manages to be dense with characterization, and yet feel as desert-dry and laconic as a cowboy’s drawl. Zahler’s been a Black Listed writer for a while now, but if there’s any justice, this crisply shot, brilliantly designed, performed and edited debut should guarantee his future in the director’s chair.