Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, though there can be some crossover between the two disciplines.

French philosopher Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896) has been cited as anticipating the development of film theory during the birth of cinema. Bergson commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essay L'illusion cinématographique (in L'évolution créatrice), he rejects film as an exemplification of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, in Cinéma I and Cinema II (1983–1985), the philosopher Gilles Deleuze took Matter and Memory as the basis of his philosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce.

David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American film and music video director who is known for his dark and stylish thrillers, such as Seven (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002), and Zodiac (2007). Fincher received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and his 2010 film The Social Network, which also won him the Golden Globe and the BAFTA for Best Director. His most recent film is 2011's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, an English-language adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel of the same name.

Fincher was born on August 28, 1962 in Denver, Colorado, the son of Claire Mae (née Boettcher), a mental health nurse who worked in drug addiction programs, and Howard Kelly Fincher, who worked as a bureau chief for Life under the name Jack Fincher. When Fincher was two years old, the family moved to San Anselmo in Marin County, California. Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. Inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Fincher began making movies at age eight with an 8 mm camera. Fincher eschewed the film school route, getting a job loading cameras and doing other hands-on work for John Korty’s Korty Films. He was later hired by Industrial Light & Magic in 1983, where he worked on productions for Twice Upon a Time, Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In 1984, he left ILM to direct a commercial for the American Cancer Society, that would show a fetus smoking a cigarette. This quickly brought Fincher to the attention of producers in Los Angeles and he was given the chance to direct the documentary The Beat of the Live Drum featuring Rick Springfield in 1985. Though he would continue to direct spots for companies like Revlon, Converse, Nike, Pepsi, Sony, and Levi's, Fincher soon discovered music videos and went on to direct many promos.

Chantal Anne Akerman (born 6 June 1950) is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the European Graduate School. Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema.^{[citation needed]}

Akerman was born to an observant Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium. Her grandparents and her mother were sent to Auschwitz; only her mother came back. This is a very important factor in her personal experience, and her mother's anxiety is a recurrent theme in her filmography. Akerman claims that, at the age of 15, after viewing Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), she decided to make movies the same night. At 18, Akerman entered the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, a Belgian film school. During her first term, however, Akerman chose to leave and make Saute ma ville, a thirteen-minute black-and-white picture in 35mm. Akerman partially subsidized Saute ma ville from shares she sold on the Antwerp diamond exchange, procuring its remaining budget through clerical work. In 1971, Saute ma ville premiered at the Oberhausen short-film festival. This same year Akerman moved to New York and remained there until 1972.

Catherine Breillat (born 13 July 1948 in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres) is a French filmmaker, novelist and Professor of Auteur Cinema at the European Graduate School.

Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort. She decided to become a writer and director at the age of 12 after watching Ingmar Bergman's Gycklarnas afton, believing she had found her "'fictional body'" in Harriet Andersson's character, Anna.

She started her career after studying acting at Yves Furet "Studio d'Entraînement de l'Acteur" in Paris together with her sister, actress Marie-Hélène Breillat (born 2 June 1947) in 1967. At the age of 17, she had her novel, l'Homme facile, (Easy Man) published. Ironically the French government banned it for readers under 18 years old. A film based on the novel was made shortly after the publication of the book, but the producer went bankrupt and the distributor Artedis blocked any commercial release of the film for twenty years although it had been given an R rating.

Breillat is known for films focusing on sexuality, intimacy, gender conflict and sibling rivalry. Breillat has been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. She cast the pornstar Rocco Siffredi in her films Romance (Romance X, 1999) and Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell, 2004). Her novels have been best-sellers.