The 10 most controversial filmmakers of all time
Sometimes the beauty of a film lies in its pure ability to transport you to another place, to induce a kind of amnesia of the world around you, forgetting everything but the screen before you for two hours. Then there are the films that prod you, interrogate you and your preconceptions, and are powerful yet controversial in the way they force you to confront things you’d never confronted before.
Then you have the Cannibal Holocaust and Ichi the Killers of the world. Films made by those who, for reasons right or wrong, sought controversy from the moment they called “Action!”. Films like these, and the people behind them, could occupy a list a hundredfold, if not larger.
Whilst the directors who dabble in the splatter, the slasher, the “gornos”, and outright pornos have a valid place in the world of cinema, it feels inane to include these when talking about controversy in cinema; it’s just too obvious.
Instead, the following directors are ones who exist in a different space. Filmmakers who have won at the likes of Cannes and the Oscars, yet still spark controversy with each film they bring to audiences, who are considered controversial in spite of their critical success.
The 10 most controversial filmmakers:
Gaspar Noé (Irréversible, Love, Climax)
Gaspar Noé gained worldwide recognition with his 2002 sophomore film, Irréversible, the rape-revenge drama that plays in reverse order and features multiple scenes of sexual and physical violence.
What followed was a series of visceral, aesthetically bold and deeply challenging films that pushed the boundaries of what was considered appropriate on-screen whilst always offering something technical or visual that you’d not seen before in cinema. Love, released in 2015, depicted an ejaculating penis, whilst Climax, released three years later in 2018, had a child electrocuted to death, making the dementia-focused, split-screen Vortex (2021) seem like a quaint children’s film in comparison.
Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)
Whilst we now know Tarantino as one of the most popular directors today with a dedicated fanbase, in the early 1990s, the director was seen as particularly risqué. Reservoir Dogs was heavily criticised for its brief depiction of torture, even though the violence was shown off-screen.
When Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, a woman in the audience famously shouted, “Scandale! Fasciste!” to which the director gave his middle finger in response. Each film of his since has prominently featured violence, sparking intense debates with every release. His latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although gore-free for the bulk of the movie, had a particularly controversial and bloody ending which saw Tarantino re-write a pivotal moment in 1960s history.
Michael Haneke (Funny Games, The White Ribbon, Caché)
Haneke’s filmography encompasses a whole range of black comedies, satires and social dramas, as well as a few controversies thrown in the mix. Funny Games, released in 1997, along with his own English-language remake ten years later, caused widespread outrage due to the sheer, unrelenting bleakness of its tale of a home invasion, prompting a third of its Cannes audience to walk out.
The White Ribbon, his film about a rural German town that experiences mysterious violent acts in the lead-up to World War I, was met with showers of praise that were equalled by reactions of shock. On the often challenging nature of his work, Haneke himself has admitted to trying to “rape the viewer” into “being reflective”.
Larry Clark (Kids, Another Day in Paradise, Bully)
With its depiction of underage children raping each other, taking drugs and spreading HIV, the 1995 film Kids simultaneously earned acclaim and derision, with the best responses being a Palme d’Or nomination and the worst being labelled as borderline “child pornography”.
Director Clark, who had previously established himself as a highly influential photographer, continued in this vein with Bully in 2001, based on the real events of a group of affluent teenagers who murdered one of their own. Once again, Clark’s filmmaking was utterly divisive and split audiences down the middle. To this day, audiences fiercely argue that the film is either a quintessential dissection of the American middle classes or a shamelessly titillating exploitation flick.
Lars Von Trier (Dogville, Antichrist, The House that Jack Built)
The Danish director, known for working in trilogies, has always had a fixation on the dark depths of humanity that have often landed him in hot water.
Whilst Dogville was criticised more for its lengthy run-time and perceived pretentiousness rather than controversial content, Antichrist caused fervent condemnation for its imagery of infant mortality and genital mutilation. Coupled with tone-deaf jokes about “being a Nazi”, which Von Trier has since apologised profusely for, the director is one of the most controversial filmmakers working today.
Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker, The Handmaiden)
With its themes of incest, mental and physical torture and suicide, Oldboy gave the audience a lot to chew on. Culminating in the protagonist cutting out his own tongue following a shocking discovery, the filmmaker drew accusations of sadism and barbarity but ultimately won that year’s Grand Prix at Cannes.
Chan-wook would continue to operate in similar thematic spaces, with Stoker and The Handmaiden straddling the line of eroticism, violence, manipulation and pain. The latter film, whilst winning a BAFTA, was also heavily criticised for perceived misogyny in its depiction of lesbian sex through an apparent male gaze.
William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Cruising, Killer Joe)
Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist was so shocking and controversial in its depiction of demonic possession that there were widespread reports of people fainting in the theatres and fleeing from the screens, and home sales of the movie were banned in the UK right up until 1999.
Unperturbed, the director would return to controversial and inflammatory material again and again, giving us the shocking crime thriller Cruising in 1980, which many in the LGBTQ+ community believed to be homophobic in its depiction of “leather culture”, and Killer Joe in 2011, which involved oral rape simulated with a drumstick of fried chicken.
John Waters (Mondo Trasho, Pink Flamingos, A Dirty Shame)
Also known as the “Sultan of Sleaze”, Waters is probably the director most aware of his own controversial nature. His short films in the 1960s would set the tone for his later features in terms of pushing the boundaries of good taste, with Eat Your Makeup (1968) re-enacting the assassination of JFK only five years after the event.
Pink Flamingos, the first in Waters’ ‘Trash Trilogy’, cemented his collaboration with drag queen Divine, and was banned in several countries for featuring, amongst other things, cannabilism, masturbation, incest and, most famously, the on-screen eating of dog faeces.
Ken Russell (The Devils, Altered States, Crimes of Passion)
Cult British director Ken Russell took the nation’s cinema and, as recalled by critic Mark Kermode, “proved that it didn’t have to be about kitchen-sink realism”. Russell’s creative exploration took him from historical horror to romance to science fiction, and controversy followed along the way.
The Devils, his biopic of a Catholic priest, with its graphic portrayal of sex and religion, was so incendiary that Warner Bros. simply refused to release it. Later films would continue to probe the extremes of the human psyche, but controversy found its way off-screen, too; in a televised interview, the director hit a film critic on the head for calling the film “monstrously indecent”.
Agnès Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7, Kung Fu Master, The Beaches of Agnés)
An uncompromising force of female filmmaking talent, Varda expressed herself in a career spanning over 60 years and over 20 films. Whilst she’s now rightly celebrated for her groundbreaking work as a woman, being a feminist director in the mid-20th century caused huge controversy at the time.
Her films didn’t shy away from the radical either. Kung Fu Master focused on the sexual relationship between a 40-year-old woman and her daughter’s 15-year-old friend, whilst her semi-autobiographic documentary The Beaches of Agnés (2008) caused a ripple of outrage at the time for showing an adult man’s erect penis.
