Bernardo Bertolucci

A protégé of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bertolucci directed his first film at 22. Before the Revolution (1964) and The Conformist (1970) earned him classic status in international art cinema, the latter landing an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Last Tango in Paris followed in 1972, a lightning rod. He continued with ambitious, often polarizing work through the '70s and early '80s - the five-hour epic 1900, the incest-tinged La Luna, the dark comedy Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man. Then The Last Emperor swept the 1988 Oscars, all nine it was nominated for, launching what critics later called his "Oriental Trilogy" with The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha. He kept directing into his seventies, releasing Me and You in 2012, six years before his death.