The term "auteur" is a French word that refers to a director or screenwriter who has a strong personal vision and creative control over their work. In film theory, an auteur is considered as someone whose films reflect their unique artistic style and expression, often resulting in a distinctive signature or authorship of the filmmaker's work. The term was popularized by French critics such as André Bazin and later adopted by American cinema scholars like Andrew Sarris who used it to describe directors with an identifiable visual and thematic style, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick.