4 Women Directors You Should Get to Know

In 2022, a woman has won an Academy Award for Best Director for only the third time in history. Even though that’s great news, we must keep fighting, and that includes looking back at some of the best women directors left out of the history books.

Chantal Akerman

Born in Brussels into a poor Jewish family, Chantal Akerman would become one of the main directors of her generation, portraying female reality and sexuality in a way never done before. Her films mixed realism and sensibility in a revolutionizing manner, turning the lives actually lived by women into film without filtering out unpleasant or non-cinematic parts. In films such as Je, Tu, Il, Elle, and Jeanne Dielman, she shows with raw intentionality how she feels about plastic representations of sexuality and the reality of women, may they be housewives, sex workers, or college students. 

Claire Denis

One of the strongest voices of independent contemporary cinema, Claire Denis is a French director with a wide array of film genres, unified by her authentic filming styles. Denis was born in France but raised in colonial French Africa, something that has very clearly influenced her work, which tackles themes of colonial and post-colonial Africa as well as life in contemporary Europe. One of the main characteristics of her unique oeuvre is the use of body and movement in relation to space, creating scenes that truly hypnotize the viewer, such as the iconic closing scene of Beau Travail. Aside from classics such as U.S. Go Home and Trouble Every Day, keep an eye out for the two films she will be releasing in 2022. 

Lina Wertmüller 

The life and work of Italian director Lina Wertmüller were bound by controversy and an exaggerated combination of tone and themes when it comes to making movies. One of the only film directors of the 20th century to refer to themselves as a feminist, Wertmüler may be referred to as a rebel, always defying norms in her personal, professional and political life. Her films were uniquely comical even when portraying existential or political themes, which lead her to be the first woman to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for Pasqualino Settebellezze in 1975. 

Marguerite Duras 

“I don’t know what a book is. No one knows. But we know it exists. And when there’s nothing, we know, just as we know we are alive, that we still haven’t died.” French writer and director Marguerite Duras wrote to remain alive, projecting readers onto her stories, and guiding them more through her thoughts through cinema. Her cinematic universe is both radical and pure, controversial in its simplicity. She always went against cinema, or at least the consumerist and purely entertaining aspects of it, creating absolute masterpieces of independent cinema such as India Song and Le Camion.