Akira Kurosawa is #18.

But what would you expect? It's a ranking based on IMDB scores. It's got nothing to do with diversity.

Hollywood has a long history of primarily funding films made and mostly starring white men, which gives them the resources to make higher quality films with stars that have more practice resulting in a far better chance of putting out a widely known and higher quality product. That isn't saying anything negative about anyone else, just that when you filter out women and minorities from the directing role and give them fewer and less experienced stars and production crews funded at a lower rate, the odds of being high quality and getting attention is far lower.

Also note how many of the listed films are blockbusters, or at least were highly promoted and widely distributed.

There is something to be said about the number of women and minority directors that have highly rated films with far fewer than 50k ratings total, due to both a smaller output and less public recognition. Their exclusion is a sign of the lack of engagement by the audience, probably for the same systemic issues of racism and misogyny.

It is a self reinforcing system, and calling it out is important but certainly isn't a surprise.

Akira Kurosawa

Japanese, male.