There’s a well-worn (read: tiresome) myth that there just aren’t that many great films directed by women. We’ve gathered here today to shatter that illusion into a million glittering, high-frame-rate pieces. From dreamy indie gems to Oscar-anointed powerhouses, these are the female-directed films that critics adore, film students dissect, and your friend with the Letterboxd addiction is using to impress boys in Brooklyn.
This list is far from exhaustive—but it’s a solid start.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Céline Sciamma
Céline Sciamma’s slow-burn queer romance between a painter and her subject unfolds on the windy edges of 18th-century France, simmering with erotic tension and serving some of the most beautiful visuals committed to film. Also, zero men. It’s perfect.
Aftersun (2022)
Charlotte Wells
Come for Paul Mescal’s short shorts, stay for the devastating emotional autopsy of memory and fatherhood. Charlotte Wells gives us grief as memory, and love as a camcorder flicker. You won’t cry until three days later in the shower.
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Sofia Coppola
A dreamy, melancholic portrait of suburban ennui and adolescent mythmaking. Still her most haunting—and debatably best—film.
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda made existential dread look chic before it was cool. This French New Wave classic follows a pop singer in real time as she awaits medical results—and questions everything. Black-and-white, but make it deeply interior and defiantly feminist.
Twilight (2008)
Catherine Hardwicke
Now tell me why Twilight feels like an indie. Say what you want, but Catherine Hardwicke kicked off the YA vampire craze with blue-tinted angst and Kristen Stewart’s best lip-bite acting. The remainder of the franchise was helmed by a rotating selection of men, but hey, at least we had Forks.
Nomadland (2020)
Chloé Zhao
Chloé Zhao turns economic collapse into a spiritual odyssey, while Frances McDormand poops in a bucket and finds transcendence on the open road. Bleak? Sure. But also strangely liberating.
13th (2016)
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay’s blistering documentary connects the dots between slavery and the modern prison-industrial complex with clarity and conviction. Required viewing that doubles as a cinematic mic drop.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Jane Campion
A Western for the modern era, Campion uses the genre to explore repression, queerness, and toxic masculinity—plus, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a cowboy with layers (of emotion and textiles).
Hustlers (2019)
Lorene Scafaria
Lorene Scafaria’s stripper crime saga is Goodfellas meets Magic Mike, with pole-dancing as economic resistance. J.Lo in this film is a moment, a movement, a manifesto. It’s also a recession story, which feels…timely.
The Assistant (2019)
Kitty Green
Possibly the quietest horror film ever made, Kitty Green captures the banality of evil via printer paper and passive-aggression. A single day in the life of a junior assistant at a Weinstein-esque firm becomes a subtle warning about complicity and silence.
Shiva Baby (2020)
Emma Seligman
A bisexual panic attack of a film, Emma Seligman traps us in the most claustrophobic Jewish funeral this side of Curb Your Enthusiasm and lets anxiety do the talking. If you’ve ever been trapped at a family function with your ex and your sugar daddy, you’ll relate.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow’s high-octane war thriller drops you into Iraq with a fuse already lit. It’s testosterone cinema, sure—but filtered through a woman’s gaze that interrogates addiction, masculinity, and the futility of control.
Lady Bird (2017)
Greta Gerwig
This is coming-of-age storytelling at its sharpest and most specific. Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical teen dramedy is a perfectly imperfect ode to mothers, Catholic school, and Sacramento ennui. Every line is a quote, every feeling a gut punch. It’s not boring—it’s Sacramento.
Women Talking (2022)
Sarah Polley
A talky film that shouldn’t work—but absolutely does. Sarah Polley’s Mennonite #MeToo chamber drama is essentially a 90-minute moral philosophy debate—and it’s riveting. Quiet fury, radical forgiveness, and the power of choosing your own exit.
Love & Basketball (2000)
Gina Prince-Bythewood
An iconic meet-cute on a basketball court, this coming-of-age film is singular. It’s a sports movie that is also a rom-com that is also a generational Black love story. We still quote “double or nothing.”
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Eliza Hittman
Eliza Hittman crafts an odyssey out of necessity in this quietly radical, observational tale. Two teens, one unplanned pregnancy, and a bus ride to New York that becomes a study in sisterhood, strength, and the systemic failures of reproductive care. Again, timely.
