Films Directed by Women

2012 film by Margarethe von Trotta

A bourgeois housewife, planning to go back to work as a physiotherapist after having devoted 20 years to her husband and two children, has her comfortable, elegant life turned upside down when she falls for a Spanish builder and begins a runaway affair.

Alex, an intersexed 15-year-old, is living as a girl, but she and her family begin to wonder whether she's emotionally a boy when another teenager's sexual advances bring the issue to a head. As Alex faces a final decision regarding her gender, she meets both hostility and compassion.

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

A woman spends time with her developmental disabled sister after the death of their father.

Documentary depicting day to day life in Angola Prison mostly from an inmate's perspective. Interviews are with several inmates including one with a life sentence who is about to die.

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Good-natured Reverend Henry Biggs finds that his marriage to choir mistress Julia is flagging, due to his constant absence caring for the deprived neighborhood they live in. On top of all this, his church is coming under threat from property developer Joe Hamilton. In desperation, Biggs prays to God for help – which arrives in the form of an angel named Dudley.

2016 film by Monika Treut

The inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and empire - their love triumphed over every obstacle flung in their path and in so doing they transformed their nation and inspired the world.

South-eastern Cameroon. A French zoologist investigates stories from pygmies about a prehistoric monster. For years, he has crossed the jungle back and forth looking for the unknown animal: the Mokélé-Mbembé, partly rhinoceros, partly crocodile, partly snake. His quest guarantees many humorous moments.
The Loch Ness monster, the abominable snowman, Bigfoot: they exist in myths, sagas and legends. Deep in the jungle in the south-east of Cameroon, the French zoologist and explorer Michel Ballot has for years been looking for proof of the existence of another such mythical being, the Mokele-Mbembe. It's like a rhinoceros with the tail of a crocodile and the head of a snake - at least that is how the pygmies describe this giant dinosaur, which apparently can even change its shape.
In this occasionally comic documentary essay, Ballot turns out to be a tenacious investigator, who cross-examines the local population keenly and wants to install cameras to capture the Mokele-Mbembe. The French filmmaker Marie Voignier follows him without commentary, adding mystery to her portrait.
Is the Mokele-Mbembe pure fiction, or does he perhaps really exist? Or is that question completely irrelevant and does the film show the confrontation between the empirically inclined Westerner and the pygmies, for whom tradition counts?

Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.

Between Munich and Seville, the destinies of sixteen characters intertwine and intersect, missing each other or colliding head-on. They are all, without knowing it, at a pivotal moment in their lives...

Tibetan Buddhist Master Choogyal Namkhai Norbu watches as his western-born son, Yeshi, who was recognized at birth as the reincarnation of a famous spiritual master, considers departing from tradition to embrace the modern world.

Shoot the Messenger follows one man's painful journey towards self-discovery. On the way he finds both his own attitudes and the expectations of his community challenged.

They belong to the armed wing of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is also an active guerrilla movement. The mission of these female fighters? Defend Kurdish territory in Iraq and Syria, and defeat ISIS (the armed militants of the so-called Islamic State group), all while embodying a revolutionary ideal advocating female empowerment. As filmmaker Zaynê Akyol follows their highly regimented lives, seasoned fighters like Rojen and Sozdar openly share with us their most intimate thoughts and dreams. Even as fighting against ISIS intensifies in the Middle East, these women bravely continue their battle against barbarism. Offering a window into this largely unknown world, Gulîstan, Land of Roses exposes the hidden face of this highly mediatized war: the female, feminist face of a revolutionary group united by a common vision of freedom.

For the thirtysomething Sheng Ruxi, whose surname unmistakably echoes the slang term "sheng nu" (leftover women), the wait for a perfect partner is growing more despairing by the day. With an ultra-anxious mother who would rather die than see her daughter stay single, Ruxi is further annoyed by the doctor she’s fixed up with. Could her new colleague, the dashing 25-year-old Ma Sai, offer last-minute salvation?

The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.

The documentary follows the life of Gaby Bustros and her family, who live in in a 200-year old mansion in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. The Bustros family, one of the noble families of Beirut, remain in their ancestral home despite the endless war that surrounds them.

Iris invites her friend Jack to stay at her family's island getaway after the death of his brother. At their remote cabin, Jack's drunken encounter with Hannah, Iris' sister, kicks off a revealing stretch of days.