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Matthew Paige Damon is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter. Ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards.

Ben Affleck is an American actor and filmmaker. He made his film debut with a minor part for The Dark End of the Street (1981), and went on to appear in several television shows, including the PBS educational program The Voyage of the Mimi (1984). Affleck played an antisemite in the sports film School Ties (1992) and featured as a regular on the television drama Against the Grain (1993). He gained attention for playing the supporting part of a high-school senior in Richard Linklater's cult film Dazed and Confused (1993), after which he had his first leading role in Rich Wilkes's comedy Glory Daze (1995).

Kevin Patrick Smith (born August 2, 1970) is an American filmmaker, actor, comedian, comic book writer, author, YouTuber, and podcaster. He came to prominence with the low-budget comedy buddy film Clerks (1994), which he wrote, directed, co-produced, and acted in as the character Silent Bob of stoner duo Jay and Silent Bob, characters who also appeared in Smith's later films Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), Clerks II (2006), Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019), and Clerks III (2022) which are set primarily in his home state of New Jersey. While not strictly sequential, the films have crossover plot elements, character references, and a shared canon known as the "View Askewniverse", named after Smith's production company View Askew Productions, which he co-founded with Scott Mosier.

Darren Aronofsky is an American filmmaker. His films are noted for their surreal, melodramatic, and often disturbing elements, frequently in the form of psychological fiction.

Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish: [ˈlwiz βuˈɲwel poɾtoˈles]; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in The New York Times called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture, Un Chien Andalou—made in the silent era—is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer, and his last film, That Obscure Object of Desire—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous and subversive".

Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres and are noted for their innovative cinematography, dark humor, realistic attention to detail and extensive set designs.

Kubrick was raised in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. He received average grades but displayed a keen interest in literature, photography, and film from a young age, and taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating from high school. After working as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began making short films on shoestring budgets, and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas: the war picture Paths of Glory (1957) and the historical epic Spartacus (1960).

The Science of Interstellar is a non-fiction book by American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, with a foreword by Christopher Nolan. The book was initially published on November 7, 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company. This is his second full-size book for non-scientists after Black Holes and Time Warps, released in 1994. The Science of Interstellar is a follow-up text for Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain.

Andrew M. Niccol (born 10 June 1964) is a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director. He wrote and directed Gattaca (1997), Simone (2002), Lord of War (2005), In Time (2011), The Host (2013), and Good Kill (2014). He also wrote and co-produced The Truman Show, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1999 and won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay. His films tend to explore social, cultural and political issues, as well as artificial realities or simulations.

His film Good Kill was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.

Niccol was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, and grew up in Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School beginning in 1973. He left New Zealand at age 21 and began directing TV ads in London, which he did for more than ten years before his directorial debut, Gattaca (1997). He was married to Susan Grace Jennifer Sullivan from 1991 to 2002, with whom he has one child, Mia Grace Ella born in December 2000. During production of S1m0ne, he met model and actress Rachel Roberts, with whom he has two children, Jack, born in 2003 (who also played "Young Nicolai" in the 2005 film Lord of War) and Ava, born in 2008.

Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by frequent references to popular culture and film genres, non-linear storylines, dark humor, stylized violence, extended dialogue, pervasive use of profanity, cameos and ensemble casts.

Joel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born September 21, 1957), popularly known as the Coen Brothers (), are American film directors, producers, screenwriters, and editors. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include: Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).

The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until The Ladykillers (2004) Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing editing credits under the alias Roderick Jaynes. They have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards together, and individually for one award each, winning Best Original Screenplay for Fargo and Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men. The duo also won the Palme d'Or for Barton Fink (1991).

Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. Cited by some critics as a modern-day example of the work of an auteur, three of Anderson's films—The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)—appeared in BBC Culture's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000.

Anderson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), as well as the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the stop-motion films Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Isle of Dogs (2018). With The Grand Budapest Hotel, he received his first Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. He currently runs the production company American Empirical Pictures, which he founded in 1998. He won the Silver Bear for Best Director for Isle of Dogs in 2018.

Joel Cohen is an American film writer, who has worked on such projects as the movies Cheaper by the Dozen, Toy Story, Money Talks and Garfield: The Movie. He frequently works with Alec Sokolow. Along with Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft, and Sokolow, Cohen was nominated in March 1996, for the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for his work on Toy Story.

Beyond writing, Cohen and Sokolow jointly directed Monster Mash: The Movie, and executively produced Gnomes and Trolls: The Secret Chamber (2008).