Movies are changing by the day and so are people who are at the helm of creating them. They are no longer a man’s domain anymore with more and more women carving a niche with their own unique thoughts and creations. Visionaries and artists who have come forth to tell their cinematic version with their own set of compelling ideas and execution styles. Around the globe, we are all rising up to the growing tribe of great women film directors who are here to stay for long.
Since the last year, nearly 11 percent of the top-grossing movies were directed by women — the most in more than a decade. Here’s a brief profile of these immensely talented women directors who are creating compelling and wonderfully creative cinema for the moviegoers.
Kathryn Bigelow: The first woman to win the directing Oscar for 2008's hard-hitting Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker). Bigelow has done wonders with an ensemble of actors — from Jamie Lee Curtis in the cop drama Blue Steel to Jeremy Renner in Hurt Locker to Jessica Chastain in the Osama Bin Laden/CIA saga Zero Dark Thirty.
Niki Caro: Her breakout film in 2002, Whale Rider featured a girl hero — a Maori girl — with wonderfully outsize ambitions. She has proved her mettle by doing wonders with non-actors and Kevin Costner in the sports-inspiring drama McFarland, USA.
Sofia Coppola: Marie Antoinette, Somewhere and The Beguiled confirm Coppola's unique appreciation for deeper human emotions. This was evident since her movie Lost in Translation which exhibited knowing chemistry between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.
Ava DuVernay: A film publicist turned director helming movies and TV, fiction and documentaries, she was the first female director to direct a live-action flick with a $100 million+ budget, A Wrinkle in Time. She also won the Sundance directing award for the 2012 drama Middle of Nowhere.
Greta Gerwig: All of just 37 years old, Gerwig has two feature films under her belt. These include the delightful adaptation of Little Women and the endearing drama comedy Lady Bird. Both of these films impressed one and all, garnering Oscar nominations.
Marielle Heller: Her debut feature film The Diary of a Teenage Girl got her awards, fans and fresh openings as a writer-director. Her love of actors is highly evident in the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, where Heller takes a different storytelling approach directing Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers.
Patty Jenkins: It was a long, long wait since her film Monster in 2003 about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, made Charlize Theron a darling of the critics and the masses. Back in action, her 2017 reboot of D.C. Comics's Wonder Woman starring Gal Gadot was the first superhero movie to have a woman calling the shots.
