Female Directed Films to Watch
In honor of Women’s History Month, watch these titles directed by women.
Even with breakout female directors and actresses turn directors rising to the scene, Hollywood is still a boys club when it comes to behind the camera work. Work has been down to make sets more equitable but we still have a lot of work to do.
Promising Young Woman
Director: Emerald Fennell
Nothing in Cassie's life is what it appears to be -- she's wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she's living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs from the past.
2. Nomadland
Director: Chloe Zhao
A woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
3. Little Women
Director: Greta Gerwig
In the years after the Civil War, Jo March lives in New York and makes her living as a writer, while her sister Amy studies painting in Paris. Amy has a chance encounter with Theodore, a childhood crush who proposed to Jo but was ultimately rejected. Their oldest sibling, Meg, is married to a schoolteacher, while shy sister Beth develops a devastating illness that brings the family back together.
4. Atlantics
Director: Mati Diop
A soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleimane, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleimane and his co-workers disappear at sea. Soon after, they come back to haunt their old neighbourhood by taking possession of the girlfriends they left behind. Some of the workers have come claiming revenge and threaten to burn the tower down if the developer does not pay their wages.
5. Mudbound
Director: Dee Rees
Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm, a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not - charming and handsome, but he is haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, now battles the prejudice in the Jim Crow South.
6. One Night in Miami
Director: Regina King
On the night of Feb. 25, 1964, in Miami, Cassius Clay joins Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Malcom X, and they discuss the responsibility of being successful black men during the civil rights movement.
7. Portrait of A Lady on Fire
Director: Celine Sciamma
France, 1770. Marianne, a painter, is commissioned to do the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Héloïse is a reluctant bride to be and Marianne must paint her without her knowing. She observes her by day, to paint her secretly.
8. Caramel
Director: Nadine Labaki
A beauty salon in Beirut is a safe haven for five women in this Lebanese romantic comedy. Shop owner Layale (Nadine Labaki) consults her employees about a problematic affair, stylist Rima (Joanna Markouzel) does not know how to handle her attraction to a female client, and seamstress Rose abandons her own ambitions to care for her family. With the support of their friends in their familiar salon, the women search for the answers to questions of life, love and happiness.
9. The Breadwinner
Director: Nora Twomey
Parvana is an 11-year-old girl who lives under Taliban rule in Afghanistan in 2001. After the wrongful arrest of her father, Parvana cuts off her hair and dresses like a boy to support her family. Working alongside a friend, she soon discovers a new world of freedom and danger. Drawing strength from the fantastical stories she invents, Parvana embarks on an epic quest to find her father and reunite her family.
10. Raw
Director: Julia Ducournau
Stringent vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier) encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world during her first week at veterinary school. Desperate to fit in, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time. The young woman soon experiences terrible and unexpected consequences as her true self begins to emerge.
11. Little Woods
Director: Nia DaCosta
In North Dakota, two estranged sisters are driven to extremes when their mother dies, leaving them with one week to pay back her mortgage.