# What is the best directorial debut film of the 2010s?

> The 2010s produced a generation of debut filmmakers who immediately redefined their genres. From Get Out to Hereditary, which debut film of the decade left the most indelible mark?

*By YPB Team · Published June 4, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-directorial-debut-film-of-the-2010s*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Get Out** — score 1000/1000
   Jordan Peele's 2017 social horror debut — a razor-sharp allegory about racism in liberal America.
2. **Swiss Army Man** — score 636/1000
   The Daniels' 2016 debut — a surreal survival comedy featuring a flatulent corpse as a philosophizing companion.
3. **Short Term 12** — score 556/1000
   Destin Daniel Cretton's 2013 debut — a compassionate drama set in a foster care facility, led by Brie Larson.
4. **The Witch** — score 556/1000
   Robert Eggers' 2015 debut — a Puritan New England folk horror film of mounting existential dread.
5. **A Quiet Place** — score 537/1000
   John Krasinski's 2018 debut — a tense post-apocalyptic horror film where sound means death.
6. **Beasts of the Southern Wild** — score 537/1000
   Benh Zeitlin's 2012 debut — a magical-realist fable about a six-year-old navigating Louisiana's bayou community.
7. **Lady Bird** — score 537/1000
   Greta Gerwig's 2017 debut — a deeply personal coming-of-age film set in Sacramento with a luminous Saoirse Ronan.
8. **Ex Machina** — score 353/1000
   Alex Garland's 2014 debut — a chilling AI drama testing the Turing test with Alicia Vikander's mesmerizing performance.
9. **The Babadook** — score 353/1000
   Jennifer Kent's 2014 debut — an Australian psychological horror film about grief and single motherhood.
10. **Whiplash** — score 227/1000
   Damien Chazelle's 2014 debut — a white-knuckle drama about a jazz drummer and his abusive mentor.
11. **Blue Ruin** — score 227/1000
   Jeremy Saulnier's 2013 debut — a revenge thriller that deconstructs the genre through an ordinary man's incompetence.
12. **Moonlight** — score 65/1000
   Barry Jenkins' 2016 film (his breakthrough debut in the mainstream) — an Oscar-winning trilogy of a gay Black man's self-discovery.
13. **Hereditary** — score 65/1000
   Ari Aster's 2018 debut — a devastating family trauma horror film culminating in one of the most disturbing endings ever.
14. **It Follows** — score 1/1000
   David Robert Mitchell's 2014 debut — an original horror concept where a supernatural curse passes between people.

Tags: movies, 2010s, directorial debut, debut films