... an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.[1] The term is commonly referenced to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.[2]
Auteurism originated in the French film criticism of the late 1940s as a value system[3] that derives from the film criticism approach of André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc—dubbed auteur theory by the American critic Andrew Sarris.