2. Steve McQueen
Not the actor from the '60s but rather the British artist turned film director Steve McQueen. He has burst on the scene in the last few years to become potentially one of the most important filmakers working today. He spent the '90s and early 200s as one of England's most prominent artists and released his first film Hunger in 2008. Hunger tells the story of the 1981 hunger strike by one Bobby Sands. The film is among the most visually brilliant works in recent memory as McQueen frames every shot as if it were a painting and he turns something as mundane as a fly buzzing around a prisoners hand into an astonishingly beautiful image. The film follows Michael Fassbender's Bobby Sands as he slowly deteriorates in front of the camera and McQueen does not spare the viewer the horrific imagery that occurs. After Hunger, McQueen made the equally acclaimed and brilliantly bleak Shame, and is currently filming 12 Years A Slave. Starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor, it promises to be among the best films to come out this year but given the popularity of McQueen's last two movies, it will probably be doomed to be seen as a Django Unchained copy which could not be further from the truth.
Filmography:Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), Twelve Years A Slave (2013)