Makers I’d Like to Follow: or, as is easier and catchier, #MILF.

Welcome to the funnest fantasy league in showbizland.

The game: Simple. 3 dream teams made of some of the industry’s finest directors — with some inexplicable choices thrown in. @Harneetsin, @PratimDGupta and yours truly have each chosen sides with very distinctive identities, and the winning team will, rather obviously, be the one with the highest score. The game runs from Diwali 2010 to Diwali 2011, which means this Friday onwards.

Scoring, too, is simple: No box-office, no other critics. The three of us rate films on a scale of 1 to 10, and you, fellow filmbuffs online, rate them on a scale of 1 to 5. So each film eventually reaches a x/35 rating, and then we total the scores.

The teams: We took turns picking favourite directors, and then handicapped each other by giving rivals directors we feel likely to lower their ratings. So each squad has 5 filmmakers we like, 2 we’d really have liked to avoid, a Mentor who acts as a mascot for the team, and one english-language filmmaker. Here they are:

Harneet Singh: The Dark Knights: Imtiaz Ali, Sriram Raghavan, Dibakar Banerjee, Rajkumar Gupta, Anees Bazmee. Plus Sajid Khan (via Raja) and Rajkumar Santoshi (via Pratim). Mentor: Rajkumar Hirani. English-language maestro: Martin Scorsese.

Pratim D Gupta: Glorious Basterds: Zoya Akhtar. Farhan Akhtar. Rohan Sippy. Anurag Kashyap. Anubhav Sinha. Plus Vipul Shah (via Harneet) and Sanjay Leela Bhansali (via Raja). Mentor: Aditya Chopra. English-language maestro: Danny Boyle.

Raja Sen: Goodfellas: Vishal Bhardwaj. Farah Khan. Kiran Rao. Tigmanshu Dhulia. Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK. Plus Ram Gopal Varma (via Pratim) and Ashutosh Gowariker (via Harneet). Mentor: Gulzarsa’ab. English-language maestros: The Coen Brothers.

Now, before you finally make up your mind: check out the posters (which I say with a shameless little bow, since I made all three). Ta-da!

Now pick a side already. All feedback about #MILF teams and their potential over the next twelve months to be posted in the comments below, and trust me, we’re planning a bunch of things to make #MILF fun for all filmbuffs, from director interactions to livechats where we can all hurl fanatical slurs at one another. Start by following the teams — and us, if you like — on Twitter simply by clicking on the poster names, pledge your allegiance below, and buckle up: as movie posters often promise, the madness begins this Friday.

Choose. Follow. Fight.