The AFI Conservatory is a division of the _American Film Institute founded in 1969, located in Hollywood's Griffith Park. Dubbed by some as "Juilliard for Filmmakers," the school is the only existing Master of Fine Arts conservatory in advanced film education. It is ranked in the top 5 graduate film programs along with USC, UCLA, NYU and Columbia University by Princeton Review and US News and World Report.

Over the years, the program has graduated 3,000 fellows, many of whom went on to become influential Hollywood filmmakers, such as Peter Deming, Caleb Deschanel, Robert Elswit, Janusz Kaminski, Robert Richardson, Darren Aronofsky, Martin Brest, John Dahl, Bill Duke, Todd Field, Carl Franklin, Amy Heckerling, Mimi Leder, Matthew Libatique, Alexandra Kerry,John McTiernan, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, John McTiernan, Paul Schrader, Edward Zwick, Arthur Dong, Scott Frank, Patty Jenkins, Elizabeth Sung, Chris Donahue, and Eric Red.