Five Essential Women-Directed Films to Celebrate Women’s History Month
This International Women’s Day, these five films highlight the power of women behind the camera. Together, they explore the beauty and joy of womanhood, as well as the loneliness and uphill battles that shape so many lives. These women-directed films are worth returning to for their artistry, emotional honesty, and distinct vision.
“Certain Women” Dir. Kelly Reichardt (2016)
Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women” is a quiet meditation on the enduring strength of mundanity — a slow-paced, plotless piece of indie realism. In present-day Montana, a lawyer (Laura Dern), a wife (Michelle Williams), a teacher (Kristen Stewart), and a rancher (Lily Gladstone) — all separated by long stretches of empty road and the particular solitude of small-town life — each holds her own ground. Each woman reaches for human connection, whether in a tense car ride or on horseback through frozen fields. Sometimes that reach is met, and sometimes it isn’t. The star-studded cast — especially Dern and Williams — shines, with Gladstone dominating every scene. The closing score is one of the film’s most striking elements, devastating in its gentleness. The film stays with viewers long after they leave the theater — through the American frontier, the lives barely visible within it, and details as small as a pile of sandstone.
Few fictional families have meant as much to young women as the March sisters, ever since Louisa May Alcott first published the titular novel in 1868. More than a century later, Greta Gerwig has become this generation’s foremost adaptor of cultural touchstones — from Mattel’s Barbie dolls to, soon, C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia” franchise. Gerwig’s 2020 Best Picture nominee, “Little Women” is about a family of women in pursuit of greatness — in love and in their talents. It features standout performances, with care evident in every corner as every scene emphasizes the tension between intimacy and independence that defines the tight family. Even so, it’s also serious and sad, from Jo’s (Saoirse Ronan) insistence that the world see women for their minds and talents to Amy’s (Florence Pugh) reminder that marriage is an economic proposition. Gerwig’s March sisters are allowed to be ambitious, lonely, and tender all at once.
Winner of the 2021 Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama, “Nomadland” made Chloé Zhao the first woman of color to win Best Director at either ceremony. The film earned every bit of its recognition. Fern (Frances McDormand) chooses to move through the parts of America that are disappearing, the little towns in between airports — off the highways in Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota. As Fern strolls through the redwoods, running her hands along the bark, we feel it with her. We feel her find strength after the loss of her livelihood and her home. That connection to nature, that community building — a tribe formed out of nothing in a trailer park — is Zhao’s cinema at its most honest. As much as Zhao’s “Hamnet,” this year’s Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and her debut 2015 feature film “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” “Nomadland” listens to its landscapes. This is a film about the oldest American impulse to head west and start over, told with a tenderness and honesty worthy of the nomads it portrays.
In conversation with Reichardt and Zhao’s attraction to the heartland, “The Power of the Dog” is another film reckoning with power in the mythologized West. This slow-burn 2022 Best Picture nominee trusts its audience’s intelligence. In 1920s Montana, the well-educated Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) inherits a ranching fortune. His cruelty and toxicity suffocate everyone around him, making his brother (Jesse Plemons) feel alone, as well as tormenting his brother’s wife (Kirsten Dunst) and their quiet son (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The film is patient and lays its puzzle pieces with precision for a surgical ending. Even better on a second watch, Campion skillfully adapts a psychological drama where power dynamics shift in moments of closeness.
“I look up at the sky, and if I can see the sun, I think about how we can both see the sun.”
Sophie (Frankie Corio), now an adult and a parent herself, revisits camcorder footage from the last vacation she took with her father Calum (Paul Mescal) when she was 11. Nothing dramatic happens. They dance, swim, bicker gently, and share the same sky. The Mediterranean blues, soft hotel lights, and wide, warm skies make up the film’s beautiful cinematography. However, Charlotte Wells quietly hints at a complex issue brewing under Calum’s silence and subtle movements. Small, simple, and visually stunning, “Aftersun” doesn’t devastate viewers right away, but keeps them thinking about the father-daughter relationship at its core for days after.
—Staff writer Liam J. Kralik can be reached at [email protected].
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