Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born 14 January 1963) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later gained recognition for formally inventive films made within the studio system.

Soderbergh's directorial breakthrough was the indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which brought him into the spotlight as a prominent figure in the film industry. At 26, Soderbergh became the youngest director to single-handedly win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the film was a commercial success worldwide and won numerous awards. His next five films, including King of the Hill (1993), were commercial failures. He shifted to more mainstream work with the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biographical film Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000). For Traffic he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

He achieved further popular and critical success with the Ocean's trilogy and film franchise (2001–2018); Che (2008); The Informant! (2009); Contagion (2011); Haywire (2011); Magic Mike (2012); Side Effects (2013); Logan Lucky (2017); Unsane (2018); Let Them All Talk (2020); No Sudden Move (2021); and Kimi (2022). His film career spans many genres, but his specialties are psychological, crime and heist films. His films have grossed more than US$2.2 billion worldwide and received fourteen Academy Award nominations, of which five were wins.

Soderbergh's films often revolve around familiar concepts that are regularly used for big Hollywood films, but he usually applies an avant-garde art-house approach. They focus on themes of shifting personal identity, revenge, sexuality, morality and the human condition. His feature films often stand out in the field of cinematography thanks to his influence of avant-garde cinema combined with the use of unconventional film and camera formats. Many of Soderbergh's films rely on multi-dimensional plotlines with twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental editing, tense soundscapes and third-person points of view.