Films Directed by Women

Compared to girls, research shows that boys in the United States are more likely to be diagnosed with a behaviour disorder, prescribed stimulant medications, fail out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. The Mask You Live In asks: as a society, how are we failing our boys?

2014 film directed by Anne Fontaine

While Aya has dreams of becoming a doctor, her two best friends, Adjoua and Bintou, just like to hang out and spend their evenings dancing, drinking and flirting with boys. Their ambition is to follow Plan C: Combs, Clothes and Chasing Men! But big trouble comes to town when Adjoua realizes she’s pregnant, and the baby’s father is the spoiled son of one of the richest and most feared men in the whole country.

Write Billops and Hatch: "Even as late as a hundred years ago, discrimination on the basis of race was considered a natural and even desirable trait for humans to possess. We Americans have tried to ignore it, deny it, suppress it, to contain it, tolerate it, legislate it, mock it, exploit it." Billops and Hatch are catalysts at the center of the film, and like a modern Virgil and Dante, they drive, cajole and lead the film's cast through a tour of the contemporary landscape of racism.

In a small town on the countryside, every young boy is forced to have the same bowl-head haircut known as the "Yoshino-gari" hairstyle. Then one day, a drastic change occurs when a transfer student with bleached hair comes from Tokyo.

A woman's life is destroyed when she discovers that her husband has another family.

When Bertha dies, her granddaughter Iris inherits her house and finds herself back in the home where she and her cousin used to play dressing-up in the summer holidays. While she wanders from room to room, she gropes her way through memories and things she had forgotten: What did her grandfather really do before he went to war? Which men were Bertha’s daughters in love with? Who ate his apple with the seeds?

After the death of her mother, Anne makes a shocking discovery: an old photograph casts doubt on her origins and leads her to discover a mysterious uncle who lived with her parents after the war. As she lifts the lid on a long forgotten family secret, the young woman learns that her mother once succumbed to an amorous passion that was as intense as it was short-lived...

1981 film by Ann Hui

Savannah is the true story of Ward Allen, a romantic and bombastic character who rejects his plantation heritage for the freedom of life on a river. Ward navigates the change of early 20th century America on the wrong side of the law and society, his long-time friend, a freed slave named Christmas Moultrie, at his side. Master of Shakespeare, and the shotgun that provides Savannah's markets with fowl, Ward fights for his rights as a hunter. His charisma and eloquent rhetoric win the heart of a society woman who defies her father to marry him. An elderly Moultrie tells the story of life on the river with his friend to a little boy, who passes the legendary Ward Allen down to the next generation.

1955 film by Kinuyo Tanaka

A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest citizens' uprisings in the history of the United States.

A former valedictorian quits her reporter job in New York and returns to the place she last felt happy: her childhood home in Connecticut. She gets work as a lifeguard and starts a dangerous relationship with a troubled teenager.

Book superstore magnate, Joe Fox and independent book shop owner, Kathleen Kelly fall in love in the anonymity of the Internet—both blissfully unaware that he's trying to put her out of business.

Holly Hunter stars as tennis legend Billie Jean King in this highly entertaining flashback to 1973's historic "Battle of the Sexes." When aging, chauvinistic tennis pro Bobby Riggs (Ron Silver) begins to challenge the world's top ladies players.

The notorious pirate ruler Madame X places a print ad, calling on women to escape their boring lives and promising "gold, love and adventure" to all who come aboard her ship, the Orlando. A motley crew including a housewife, diva and artist (played by Yvonne Rainer) embark on a quest for self-transformation, which quickly heads towards destruction as they are subjected to Madame X's sadistic, erotic escapades.

Meet Richard Jackson - a man fed up with the insanity of "plastic" suburban living. Rallying his befuddled family around him, Richard mounts an outrageously comic assault on credit card craziness, "Yuppie" status symbols and "the system" in general!

Black comedy about a lucrative business. Grandmother, mother and daughter live together in a love-hate-relationship and run their business with divided responsibilities: via marriage ads they are looking for candidates. It’s the daughter that gets dressed and styled according to the new mission: no matter if vamp or tree-hugger she twists the men around her little finger until they clear their accounts from all the savings. The money ends up in coffee tins stored in grandma’s fridge. But where do the men end up when they discover the secret of the trio?

1934 film by Marie Epstein, Jean Benoît-Lévy

Fourteen-year-old J goes by the pronoun ‘They’ and lives with their parents in the suburbs of Chicago. J is exploring their gender identity while taking hormone blockers to postpone puberty. After two years of medication and therapy, J has to make a decision whether or not to transition. Over this crucial weekend while their parents are away, J’s sister Lauren and her maybe/maybe-not Iranian partner Araz arrive to take care of ‘They.'