The 1960s were a decade of radical, ground-shaking iconoclasm, political upheaval, youth counterculture, and civil rights. And as with many social structures, the decade shattered cinema, namely the traditional studio systems, birthing the modern era of filmmaking. The decade began under the total creative dominance of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), as directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut popularised jump cuts, handheld camera work, and breaking the fourth wall, proving that cinema could be low-budget, deeply philosophical, and commercially viable.

This revolutionary energy quickly spread globally, sparking the Czech New Wave, the Japanese New Wave, and the subversive Yugoslav Black Wave. By the late 1960s, the restrictive American Hays Production Code collapsed entirely, replaced by the MPAA rating system in 1968. This gave filmmakers unprecedented freedom to depict graphic violence, overt sexuality, and psychological ambiguity, culminating in counterculture masterpieces like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Easy Rider (1969), which effectively ended classical Hollywood and inaugurated the “New Hollywood” era.

Directors born in the 1960s included Leos Carax (1960), Richard Linklater (1960), Peter Jackson (1961), Alfonso Cuarón (1961), David Fincher (1962), Quentin Tarantino (1963), and Park Chan-wook (1963). These directors witnessed the birth of the home video (VHS) market and the first generation of film-school dominance.