The Best Films Directed by Women, Ranked (Number 1 is Surprising)

Although movies have been made as long as you and I, and perhaps our parents, can remember, the movie directing industry is still In a male dominated situation. About as little as 8% in the US are female directors in the year of 2015, says BBC. If you’d like to know what powerful women have been able to produce, keep reading!

1

The Matrix

Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
1999

Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.

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8.7 IMDB
2

Capernaum

Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole
Nadine Labaki
2018

Zain, a 12-year-old boy scrambling to survive on the streets of Beirut, sues his parents for having brought him into such an unjust world, where being a refugee with no documents means that your rights can easily be denied.

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8.4 IMDB
3

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami
Céline Sciamma
2019

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

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8.2 IMDB
4

Lost in Translation

Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi
Sofia Coppola
2003

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

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7.7 IMDB
5

The Hurt Locker

David Morse, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie
Kathryn Bigelow
2008

Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

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7.6 IMDB
6

Happy as Lazzaro

Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, Luca Chikovani
Alice Rohrwacher
2018

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

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7.6 IMDB
7

The Piano

Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill
Jane Campion
1993

After a long voyage from Scotland, pianist Ada McGrath and her young daughter, Flora, are left with all their belongings, including a piano, on a New Zealand beach. Ada, who has been mute since childhood, has been sold into marriage to a local man named Alisdair Stewart. Making little attempt to warm up to Alisdair, Ada soon becomes intrigued by his Maori-friendly acquaintance, George Baines, leading to tense, life-altering conflicts.

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7.6 IMDB
8

Selma

David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Carmen Ejogo
Ava DuVernay
2014

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

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7.5 IMDB
9

Whale Rider

Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton
Niki Caro
2003

On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

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7.5 IMDB
10

Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen
Patty Jenkins
2017

An Amazon princess comes to the world of Man in the grips of the First World War to confront the forces of evil and bring an end to human conflict.

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7.4 IMDB
11

Toni Erdmann

Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek, Michael Wittenborn
Maren Ade
2016

Without warning a father comes to visit his daughter abroad. He believes that she lost her humor and therefore surprises her with a rampage of jokes.

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7.4 IMDB
12

Lady Bird

Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts
Greta Gerwig
2017

A California high school student plans to escape from her family and small town by going to college in New York, much to the disapproval of wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mother.

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7.4 IMDB
13

The Rider

Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau
Chloé Zhao
2018

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.

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7.4 IMDB