Auteur theory is the idea that the director is the principal author of a film, with a recognisable personal signature.
Auteur theory was articulated in 1954 by François Truffaut in 'Cahiers du Cinéma', the journal where the future filmmakers of the French New Wave first sharpened their thinking. Truffaut's essay 'Une certaine tendance du cinéma français' attacked the polished but impersonal 'Tradition of Quality' and argued that the truest films bear the unmistakable stylistic and thematic signature of a single creative mind — the director. American critic Andrew Sarris translated the idea into English in his 1962 essay 'Notes on the Auteur Theory' and used it to elevate Hollywood directors like Hitchcock, Hawks, and Ford from craftsmen to artists. The theory remains contested — film is collaborative, after all — but it transformed how cinema is taught, criticised, and remembered. Today, when we speak of 'a Kubrick film' or 'a Wong Kar-wai film', we are speaking the language Truffaut invented.