Who directed the film '1917'?

Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter, best known for his directoral debut film 'American Beauty' (1999), which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the crime film 'Road to Perdition' (2002), the James Bond films 'Skyfall' (2012) and 'Spectre' (2015), and the war film '1917' (2019), which earned him his second Golden Globe Award for Best Director.

He is also known for dark re-inventions of the stage musicals 'Cabaret' (1994), 'Oliver!' (1994), 'Company' (1995), and 'Gypsy' (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (2013). For directing the play 'The Ferryman', Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.

In 2000, Mendes was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to drama", and he was knighted in the 2020 New Years Honours List. In 2000 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Hamburg, Germany. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain. In 2008 The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 15 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".