What is the best directorial debut of the 1980s?

Alex Cox's 1984 cult debut sent a young punk into the alien-conspiracy-laced world of Los Angeles car repossession — anarchic, funny, and unlike anything before it.

Susan Seidelman's 1985 debut paired Rosanna Arquette and Madonna in a screwball identity-swap comedy that captured the downtown New York art scene with infectious energy.

Gregory Nava's 1983 debut follows two Guatemalan siblings who flee military violence and undertake a harrowing journey to California — a landmark of Chicano cinema and political empathy.

Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery's 1982 co-directed debut was a slow-burning biker noir — Willem Dafoe's first major role — that established Bigelow's eye for masculine ritual and violence.

Spike Lee's 1986 debut — a frank, funny black-and-white comedy about a woman navigating three simultaneous relationships — roared onto the scene as a feminist provocation and a new cinematic voice.

Jim Jarmusch's 1984 deadpan debut — three slackers drifting between New York, Cleveland, and Florida — invented American independent cinema's distinctive minimalist tone.

Sam Raimi's 1981 debut, shot in the Tennessee woods for $375,000, fused gonzo visual energy with genuine terror to create one of the most influential horror debuts in the genre's history.

Tim Burton's 1985 theatrical debut turned Paul Reubens' eccentric TV character into a surrealist road-movie odyssey that established Burton's idiosyncratic visual sensibility.