Text by Flavorpill/Judy Berman
Kathryn Bigelow may have been the first female filmmaker to win a Best Director Oscar for 2009′s The Hurt Locker. But did you happen to notice that for the most recent Academy Awards, the nominees in the same category were all men — in a year when two movies directed by women, Winter’s Bone and The Kids Are All Right, were up for Best Picture? Gender inequalities exist throughout the arts, but they’re especially pronounced in the rarefied world of film directing. We all know a few big-name women filmmakers: Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Susan Seidelman, Catherine Hardwicke, Nora Ephron, Julie Taymor. In honor of International Women’s Day, we present ten great, contemporary female directors who you may not know but should definitely check out.
Nicole Holofcener
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Writer/director Nicole Holofcener has spent the past two decades making resonant, personal, independent films that center on the lives of regular women. Balancing drama and insight with a sharp wit, Holofcener coaxes subtle, realistic performances out of her ensemble casts — a talent that earned her (along with her actors and casting directors) a special Robert Altman Award at last month’s Independent Spirit Awards. We’ve also got to give Holofcener a shout out for spotlighting one of our favorite actresses, Catherine Keener, in every single one of her features.
Suggested viewing: Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing, Please Give
Deepa Mehta
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Although she now makes her home in Canada, Deepa Mehta’s creative heart belongs to her birthplace, India. She is best known for her Elements Trilogy (Fire, Earth, and Water), a set of three films, made over the course of a decade, that dramatize pressing controversies — religion, homosexuality, the treatment of women — that consume her homeland. Now, Mehta is collaborating with Salman Rushdie on an adaptation of his book, Midnight’s Children.
Suggested viewing: Fire, Water
Claire Denis
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A French filmmaker raised in various parts of Africa, Denis makes films that focus mostly on France’s African and other immigrant populations. Her movies are impeccably composed and edited, generally stick close to a few main characters, and proceed at a slow meditative pace. These are art films with an irresistible humanist touch.
Suggested viewing: White Material, 35 Shots of Rum, Beau Travail
Mary Harron
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A spare, keen-eyed, and pop-minded writer/director, Mary Harron came up as a music journalist in New York’s ’70s punk scene. She’s only made three features, each zeroing in on a controversial cultural figure or work: deranged feminist and SCUM Manifesto author Valerie Solanas, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, and pinup queen Bettie Page. Although it’s been six years since her last film, Harron has directed episodes of some of our favorite TV shows (Big Love, Six Feet Under) and is working on perhaps our most anticipated movie of all time, an adaptation of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s essential oral history of punk, Please Kill Me.
Suggested viewing: I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho
Read and watch more about the other women directors
