Films Directed by Women

In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

2009 film by Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari

Sex, love, break ups, turning 30, and staying in.

Agnès Varda's documentary portrait of her late husband, Jacques Demy. A companion piece to her Jacquot de Nantes.

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

2010 film by Kelly Reichardt

A chic American jewel thief falls in love with one of her marks, an English lord.

A dishonest insurance salesman's life quickly disintegrates during a Wisconsin winter when he teams up with a psychopath to steal a rare violin at the home of a reclusive farmer.

Sixteen-year-old Billie’s reluctant path to independence is accelerated when her mother reveals plans for gender transition, and their time together becomes limited to Tuesdays. This emotionally charged story of desire, responsibility, and transformation was filmed over the course of a year—once a week, every week, only on Tuesdays.

Actress Rosie Perez makes a stunning directorial debut in this heartfelt tribute to Puerto Rican pride. She takes an in-depth look at the complex and often controversial history of Puerto Rican-U.S. relations. By turns shocking and celebratory, this wide-ranging documentary examines such rich themes of the Puerto Rican experience as family, language, and racism, all with careful consideration of historical context.

2004 film

When rebellious 16-year-old Grace takes off, her exasperated mum and dad enlist the help of a close-to-retirement detective, and begin the long drive from Perth out to the West Australian wheatbelt to try to find her. On the journey, the two must confront the realities of their changing relationship to one another, and to their daughter…

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria's relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

A dying woman, who stole her best friend's lover, is convinced that a spell has been cast on her, so she orchestrates her former friend's return from a self-imposed exile in Africa in the hopes of breaking the spell.

1982 film by Coline Serreau

"The story of an 18-year-old Iranian girl (a fine performance by Flora Shabaviz( living in a poor village on the edge of a new town whose personality slowly breaks down under the pressure of modern and western influences. SHe refuses to get married and the new ideas of her younger sister and others eventually create an individuality and a pressure that erupts in an hysterical nervous breakdown. There are almost no camera movements and the usual transition is a fade. it's very quiet and still and beautiful but with a great deal of feeling concealed beneath its calm exterior." (Ken Wlaschin, Film and Filming).

From directors Nick Doob and Shari Cookson, "Requiem for the Dead" is made entirely from found footage, including social media posts, 9-1-1 calls, news stories and police files. The film tells the stories of those who have been killed by gunfire, whether from accidental violence, random shootings, family disputes or suicide. Hear those stories of those who have died, which is only a fraction of the 32,000 people killed in America each year, 88 per day, from gun violence.

A nanny is hired by a troubled mother and finds herself fighting to hold together the entire family when she realizes the woman has an imaginary daughter.

A young man named David unknowingly ventures into a land controlled by the powerful witch queen, Alotta, and her coven. Every year the local villagers must offer a child to the queen in order to maintain a pact of peace. But David has fallen in love with a river nymph named Yyala and he cannot have a relationship with her as long as he has a soul. So, he offers his soul to Alotta in exchange for the life of a sacrificial child. Now David and Yyala can be together, but if Yyala ever abandons him, his life belongs to the witch...

Two sisters in an Australian country town develop a fierce and competitive crush on their new neighbour, a brooding and self-centred radio personality.