Eight Women Directors You Should Know
It’s a harsh fact that many scholars face as they begin their critical studies of film: The century-and-a-half of facts, stories, and legends making up the history of cinema have mostly been about, written by, and for men. The last few decades have seen a strong shift towards highlighting women writers and filmmakers, but most of the essential texts of any film program have shown a strong bias towards male directors and producers. Luckily, in the age of the internet, there’s no shortage of articles, thinkpieces, and even books that collect and analyze the works of great women filmmakers, and since March is Women’s History Month, we at FilmFrog wanted to take the time to highlight 8 directors worthy of more attention!
This is in no way an exhaustive list of notable women directors, or even a strictly qualitative list of the greatest who ever lived, but simply a collection of 8 directors who have created great, enduring films who we believe deserve more of a spotlight. If you have a personal favorite that you think should get more attention, let us know on our social channels!
Dorothy Arzner
When the Director’s Guild of America was founded in 1936, only one woman was directing films in the Hollywood studio system, and her name was Dorothy Arzner. Arzner specialized in melodramas such as Christopher Strong, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Dance Girl Dance, although she originally got her start making popular comedies for Clara Bow in the silent era. Arzner never thought of herself as a pioneer, but as one of the first woman and openly gay filmmakers working in Hollywood, her films attracted the attention of a number of feminist and queer scholars in the 70s. They discovered that her work often subverts traditional gender expectations of Hollywood films from the era, and several of them focus on women finding comfort with each other rather than the arms of a man.
Essential films: Merrily We Go To Hell (1932), Dance Girl Dance (1940)
Gurinder Chadha
Raised in the Indian diaspora of East Africa, Chadha moved to England in college and found work as a TV reporter for the BBC in her early 20s. This experience led her to directing a number of acclaimed documentaries for TV before branching out into feature narrative filmmaking with Bhaji on the Beach in 1994, a dramedy that was the first feature film directed by a British Asian woman. From her acclaimed 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham onward, she told feel-good stories that also tackled racial and gender discrimination in a thought-provoking manner. Of all her films, Beckham is by far the biggest hit, being one of the highest-grossing British films of the early 2000s, but she has remained working since then and has had a number of other successes such as Bride & Prejudice, Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, and most recently, Blinded By the Light.
Essential films: Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Blinded By the Light (2019)
Chinonye Chukwu
Chinonye Chukwu has only been a working filmmaker for the last decade, but her first two major features have already garnered numerous accolades and she deserves to be known as a director worth watching. She moved from Nigeria to Fairbanks, Alaska, when she was only six years old, and spent years there dreaming of being able to make movies and music videos. After attending a graduate film school at Temple University, Chukwu spent six years researching the lives of prison inmates in America which led to her first feature film, Clemency, starring Viola Davis. This film won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize at Sundance and immediately announced the arrival of a new talent in director Chukwu. After that film’s success, she was brought on to direct Till, a biopic all about Mamie Till-Mobley’s fight for justice in the case of her son Emmet Till’s murder. The film was hugely acclaimed for Chukwu’s sensitive direction and Danielle Deadwyler’s powerhouse performance of Mamie Till-Mobley. It’s been two years since the release of Till, but as of 2023, Chukwu was attached to the film adaptation of the memoir Wolf Hustle, so hopefully we will hear from her again soon!
Essential films: Clemency (2019), Till (2022)
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino made a name for herself long before she stepped behind the camera, acting as the headstrong romantic lead in a number of 1940s Hollywood films like High Sierra, Moontide, and The Man I Love. But by the late 40s, she and her husband at the time decided to start their own production company, a rare career move for actors from that era. She wanted to make a series of low-budget films focusing on social issues of the day, and after taking over the company’s first film from a director who had to take sick leave, Lupino got the itch to direct them herself. Her films showcase a keen eye for performance, subtlety in tackling real-world problems, and an empathy for her characters that goes against the traditional Hollywood “good guy/bad guy” dynamic. Her films like Not Wanted, Never Fear, and Outrage focus on topics most America films of the era ignored - from unwed pregnancy to the crippling effects of polio - but she might be best known for the taut film noir classic The Hitch-Hiker.
Essential films: The Hitch-Hiker (1953), The Bigamist (1956)
Deepa Mehta
One of the most internationally-regarded filmmakers of her era, the Indian-born Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta achieved critical and commercial acclaim for her films dealing with social problems among Indian citizens and members of the Indian diaspora, often tackling transnationality and cultural divides. Most notably, her “Elements” trilogy saw her making films about controversial topics like arranged marriage, homosexuality, and female sexuality in the staunchly patriarchal culture of India across three films: Fire, Earth, and Water. She especially became noteworthy when these films became the subject of international controversy across India (with Fox Searchlight using years of protests from Hindu nationalists to promote Water in America). Since the trilogy wrapped, she has directed a number of acclaimed drama films such as the Salman Rushdie adaptation Midnight’s Children and the Sri Lankan film Funny Boy.
Essential films: Fire (1995), Water (2005)
Mabel Normand
In the last few decades, a number of scholars and historians have called attention to a number of women who directed films during the silent era - Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, and Lotte Reninger, to name just a few. But one woman was more famous in her day than all of them: Mabel Normand, a silent comedian who’s had to spend most of history in the shadow of Charlie Chaplin’s success. Normand was a huge star with Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios, making silent short comedies for theaters while the medium of film was still in its infancy and very few stars existed. She used this leverage to direct a number of films at the company, including some early works of Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. But after a couple bad business deals and links to major national scandals like the Fatty Arbuckle case and the murder of William Desmond Taylor, Normand’s career sadly never recovered and she retired from films in 1926.
Essential films: Caught in a Cabaret (1914), Mabel’s Blunder (1914)
Gina Prince-Bythewood
After graduating UCLA in the late 80s, Gina Prince-Bythewood worked as a TV writer for nearly a decade on such shows as A Different World, South Central, and Felicity. It wasn’t until she workshopped a script of her’s at the Sundance Writing Labs that she finally made the leap to cinema, as her debut screenplay Love & Basketball got the attention of director Spike Lee, who encouraged Prince-Bythewood to direct the project herself. The film was a critical and commercial success (one which now is a part of the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress), but she only directed intermittently over the next 20 years with films like The Secret Life of Bees and Beyond the Lights. In recent years, she’s taken on a new career path as a director of action films, with titles like Netflix’s The Old Guard and the Viola Davis-led The Woman King in 2022, as well as a fantasy film she’s filming this year entitled Children Borne of Blood and Bone.
Essential films: Love & Basketball, The Woman King
Doris Wishman
“When I die, I’ll make movies in Hell!” That quote alone should tell you that Doris Wishman’s films are not for the faint of heart. One of the most unique characters in 1960s cinema, Wishman was a middle-aged woman who, according to her, needed something to do after her husband passed away suddenly, and decided that making cheap nudie exploitation films would be a fun way to pass the time. She ended up making films regularly from 1959 all the way through the mid-to-late 70s before becoming unable to find funding anymore during the height of the porno chic era. Among her prolific filmography, though, are some of the most singular, demented films that ever played grindhouse theaters across America. Known for her distinct style, her roving guerilla camerawork, her willingness to tackle taboos and gender dynamics in a male-dominated field, and a janky editing rhythm designed to hide the fact that she shot without live sound, her work remains one-of-a-kind, instantly recognizable to any fan of exploitation cinema.
Essential films: Nude on the Moon (1961), Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965)