Films Directed by Women

Vienna, 1995. Jasmin, Tamara, Valentin, Senad and Roman live near the northern border of Austria. Their lives repeatedly intersect and drift apart. The characters involved are young migrants from the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland and Austria itself. Strangers in a strange land, they feel a sense of loss in their new, temporary environment. The five-some meet and get close to each other, hopelessly clinging to friendships and relationships with no future. They frequent cafés and train stations dreaming of a better tomorrow. Often, they just fall back on the prospect of short-term affection in yet another doomed romantic or sexual encounter. Trying hard to suppress the memories of war and alienation, they try to find moral strength and warmth through one another.

Spike and his sister Anjela live in the Terrordome, a huge ghetto that all the blacks have been forced to live in. Jodie, Spike's pregnant white girlfriend, ran away from an abusive white boyfriend who, after seeing her with Spike, sets up a trap for her. Spike's 11-year old nephew Hector dies as a result of this trap, and Anjela, finding the body of her son, goes on a police-killing rampage. Her apprehension sets off tension between Spike and his brother-in-law, as a race war broods inside the Terrordome.

Between divorce, bad relationships and coming out as gay, a group of affluent friends realize that none of their lives are as easy as they seem.

Scripted by Ingmar Bergman, this very personal film is about a destructive affair which wrecks the marriage of an actress (Marianne) and musician (Markus). Wanting to continue the affair, Marianne moves in with her lover. But she is tormented by Markus' decision not to let her have custody of their daughter. Finally Markus announces he may have a solution to the stalemate, but this leads to deception, lies and ultimately, tragedy.

1968 Swedish film by Mai Zetterling

A violent greaser gang is ripped apart when their leader finds love and is determined to leave Badsville - a town where love doesn't exist.

This romantic comedy follows two couples in Copenhagen trying to settle down. Sus, who works in a beauty clinic, tries to live happily with her Italian husband. Soon after she tells him that she's pregnant she discovers that he's having an affair with one of her clients at the beauty clinic. She kicks him out of the apartment just as their new kitchen arrives. Niller, the kitchen installer, is a down-to-earth kind of guy who lives a childless, but otherwise happy life with Lizzie. They're busy preparing for a child adoption, only one event will have a huge impact on both their lives just as the newly adopted girl shows up from Burkina Fasu. At the same time Niller falls head-over-heels in love with Sus. Written by Eroka

Abandoned by her husband, Barbi is dragged into trouble by her girlfriend, who spouts women's lib as she gets Barbi to discard her bra and go out on the town. Barbi becomes a Red Riding Hood in a sea of wolves, and quickly learns a lot more than she wanted to about nudist camps, the hippie scene, orgies, bisexuality, sadism, drugs, and bohemia.

A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.

Concert held on August 4, 5 and 6, 2008 at the Nippon Budōkan hall in Tokyo to commemorate both the Japanese theatrical release of Ponyo (2008) and the 25 years of musical collaboration between composer Joe Hisaishi and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.

Visions of Eight is a 1973 documentary film offering a stylized look at the 1972 Summer Olympics, directed by eight different directors. It was screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.

A woman from a "cursed" family is released from a mental facility, and soon dismembered corpses start turning up.

Set in 1979 Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq has imposed martial law and, within a few months, the country is decreed a Muslim state. Aicha, a well-adjusted woman in her forties, devotes her life to the education of her eighteen-year-old son Salim, in the little village of Charkhi, in the Pakistani Penjab. Salim is a quiet dreamer, but the fast moving political situation fills Aicha with anxiety, since her son is changing out of all recognition.

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Misa Kuroi is an adorable high-school girl who arrives at her new school when it is falling under an evil supernatural force. Trying to figure out who's behind the supernatural attack, Misa also has to deal with assumptions by her fellow classmates that believe she is the one behind it all. Misa and twelve other students are kept late after school hours one day to retake an exam. Then, after sunset, the entire school is deserted, and the students find themselves trapped inside and their teacher no where to be found. One by one, the thirteen students are picked up and disposed of in horrific and graphic fashion. It is up to Misa to try and gain the trust of her fellow students so that she can protect them and stop the evil before it's too late.

As three pregnant women wait to have their babies in a hospital in Stockholm at the outbreak of the Great War, they relive their childhood and youthful experiences.

A suspended cop and his girlfriend blackmail an electronics expert into helping them break into the safe of the girlfriend's boss, a corrupt city councilman who's on the local mob's payroll.

In the midst of the Egyptian Arab Spring, Bassem Youssef makes a decision that’s every mother’s worst nightmare… He leaves his job as a heart surgeon to become a full-time comedian.
Dubbed, “The Egyptian Jon Stewart,” Bassem creates the satirical show, Al Bernameg. The weekly program quickly becomes the most viewed television program in the Middle East, with 30 million viewers per episode. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart averaged two million viewers.
In a country where free speech is not settled law, Bassem’s show becomes as controversial as it popular. He and his staff must endure physical threats, protests, and legal action, all because of jokes. As Bassem attempts to remain on the air, keep his staff safe, and not get arrested, he continues to let those in power know they’re being held accountable. Despite increasing danger, the team at Al Bernameg employ comedy, not violence, to comment on hypocrisy in media, politics, and religion.
Tickling Giants follows the team of Al Bernameg as they discover democracy is not easily won. The young women and men working on Bassem’s show are fearless revolutionaries, who just happen to be really, really funny.
No unicorns or falafel were harmed in the making of this film.

In the summer of ’76, as President Jimmy Carter pledges to give government back to the people, tensions run high in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where the Black Panthers once flourished. When Marcus returns—having bolted years earlier—his homecoming isn’t exactly met with fanfare. His former movement brothers blame him for an unspeakable betrayal. Only his best friend’s widow, Patricia, appreciates Marcus’s predicament, which both unites and paralyzes them. As Patricia’s daughter compels the two comrades to confront their past, history repeats itself in dangerous ways.
Night Catches Us masterfully reckons with the complexity of its characters’ revolutionary ideologies and internal desires. Bell-bottoms, Afros, potlucks, and Caddies set the scene as the film potently interweaves political media with an evocative soul-inspired score, summoning a vivid sense of place and time. The golden light that bathes characters’ faces seems to express the promise—and elusiveness—of the necessary change Marcus and Patricia struggle for so dearly—each by separate means.

A story of a mother who had to change her profession from a teacher to a high class prostitute to make a living.