Christopher Hill

Christopher Hill once directed two talking cane toads on a road trip, and somehow made them completely believable. Jonah Hill was a fan. Cannes gave it a Young Director Award. That's Christopher in a nutshell — comedy so immaculately crafted you forget how strange it is.

He builds hyperreal worlds and casts them straight: Alexander Skarsgård as a reluctant cult leader in Cut Copy's "Free Your Mind," a merman in a Belgian post office, whatever the idea demands. The VFX is invisible, the performances are real, and the joke always lands — then lands again on the second watch, which is the harder trick.

He's just as at home in fashion film (his short "The Dinner" was nominated at the Berlin Fashion Film Awards) as he is selling burgers, and his recent run across McDonald's, Doritos, Carl's Jr, BWS and bPost shows a director who can carry heavy craft and a straight-faced gag in the same hand.