Top 10 Film Schools in the World

1. American Film Institute

NOTABLE ALUMNI Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), David Lynch (Blue Velvet), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
"I love AFI and would be nowhere without it." -- David Lynch

2. University of Southern California

NOTABLE ALUMNI George Lucas (Star Wars), Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), Jon Landau (Avatar)
"USC is run in many ways like a studio. The challenges that were given to us had to do with the realities of the industry and financing, and I think those were important lessons to learn." -- Lee Unkrich, director, Toy Story 3

3. Beijing Film Academy

NOTABLE ALUMNI Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers), Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite)

4. New York University Tisch School of the Arts

NOTABLE ALUMNI Todd Phillips (The Hangover), Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men), Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich)
"Getting accepted to Tisch meant one thing to me: hope. It validated all of my dreams and made the concept of becoming a filmmaker a tangible possibility. Teachers like Tom Drysdale and Haig Manoogian inspired me, infusing me with a lifelong passion for cinema history. I carry their artistic philosophy with me on every film: Never compromise, never stop asking questions and never stop being a student of film." -- Chris Columbus, writer-director, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

5. University of California Los Angeles

NOTABLE ALUMNI Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather), Tim Robbins (Dead Man Walking), Alexander Payne (Sideways)
"The key is having a point of view -- which is very much the UCLA approach. You could say UCLA filmmakers try to bring an indie attitude even to studio pictures. We always try to find some kind of subjectivity." -- Justin Lin, director, Fast Five

6. California Institute of the Arts

NOTABLE ALUMNI Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland), Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), John Lasseter (chief creative officer, Pixar)
"I have so many great memories of CalArts. Sitting in the dark, hunched over the old Oxberry camera, shooting my film. The giant papier-mache butt from someone's art installation in the main gallery. Playing Lazer Tag in the empty halls in the middle of the night. But what I remember most are all the great friends that I made, many of whom I work alongside today." -- Don Hall, co-director, Winnie the Pooh

7. The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

NOTABLE ALUMNI Milos Forman (Amadeus), Emir Kusturica (Black Cat, White Cat), Agnieszka Holland (The Killing)
"I believe deeply that in any film school, you can learn as much, or even more, from the fellow students as from the teachers. But in FAMU in the late 1960s and early '70s, when I was studying, some of the teachers were great. My main instructor Karel Kachyna was indeed one of the most skilled directors of his generation. Jan Matejovsky in the television directing department taught us how to be diplomatic with actors, crew and producers. I still use his very useful advice." -- Agnieszka Holland

8. Columbia University School of the Arts

NOTABLE ALUMNI Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right), Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking)
"My years in the film program taught me the craft of screenwriting as well as the business of making movies. In so many ways, Columbia was the perfect combination of arts: conservatory and trade school, a place where I could read Aristotle and Eisenstein on narrative theory and analyze budgets and box office like a science. The lessons learned at Columbia -- how to analyze and synthesize perspectives, how to treat your work as an ever-evolving document -- serve me every day." -- Simon Kinberg, screenwriter, X-Men: The Last Stand

9. Wesleyan University

NOTABLE ALUMNI Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl), Michael Bay (Transformers), Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand)

10. The National Film and Television School

NOTABLE ALUMNI David Yates (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2), Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit), Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason)
"I would not be making films in Hollywood without it. The NFTS was absolutely vital." -- Michael Caton-Jones, director, Scandal


See the complete details on the Hollywood Reporter.

Tweet