FemaleDirectors.com is a website for female-directed movies: you can find, play, and add them to your Netflix queue, and buy them on Amazon.com. Browse within our genres to find movies from the female perspective.
Independent
Winter's Bone
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Winter's Bone

2010
In director Debra Granik's unflinching noir drama set deep in the Ozarks, resilient teen Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) goes on the trail of her missing, drug-dealing father when his absence jeopardizes the family's safety. Her deadbeat dad has a key court date pending, and Ree is determined that he show up -- despite the objections of the insular Dolly clan. The film earned Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nods for Best Picture and for Lawrence.

Directed by:

  • Debra Granik
    • rating:3.7.png 3.7 Average Rating


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    Iron Jawed Angels
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    Iron Jawed Angels

    2004
    From 1912 to 1920, a group of fiery young suffragettes led by Alice Paul (Hilary Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor) band together to wheedle the United States into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Along the way, they incur the wrath of President Woodrow Wilson (Bob Gunton) and anger other suffragette leaders (Anjelica Huston and Lois Smith). Directed by Katja von Garnier.

    Directed by:

  • Katja von Garnier
    • rating:3.9.png 3.9 Average Rating


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    Strangers in Good Company
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    Strangers in Good Company

    1990
    When a bus filled with eight elderly women breaks down in the wilderness, the group of strangers is stranded at a deserted farmhouse with only their wits, their memories and eventually some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them. For several days, the women share their life stories and intimate thoughts. Director Cynthia Scott directs these nonprofessional actors delivering largely improvised dialogue to heartwarming effect.

    Directed by:

  • Cynthia Scott
    • rating:3.4.png 3.4 Average Rating


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    Mississippi Masala
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    Mississippi Masala

    1992
    Mira Nair concocts a fascinating picture of Mina (Sarita Choudhury), an Indian woman whose father (Roshan Seth) pines for his native Uganda, where his family lived prosperously until the evil Idi Amin took power. Transplanted to rural Mississippi, the family struggles to make ends meet by running a string of motels, but they don't yet feel at home. When Mina falls for an African American entrepreneur (Denzel Washington), complications arise.

    Directed by:

  • Mira Nair
    • rating:3.3.png 3.3 Average Rating


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    Drama
    Life as We Know It: The Complete Series
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    Life as We Know It: The Complete Series

    2004
    This critically acclaimed but short-lived series from the creators of "Freaks and Geeks" follows high school students Dino (Sean Faris), Ben (Jon Foster) and Jonathan (Chris Lowell), who spend most of their time in class and the rest of it trying to figure out women. Reality-show rocker Kelly Osbourne and D.B. Sweeney (The Cutting Edge) round out a supporting cast that includes Lisa Darr, Missy Peregrym and Marguerite Moreau.

    Directed by:

  • Michael Engler
  • Michael Spiller
  • Rachel Talalay
  • Paul Holahan
    • rating:3.7.png 3.7 Average Rating


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    Beautiful Thing
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    Beautiful Thing

    1996
    The iconoclastic, underachieving denizens of a southeast London apartment building get an emotional wake-up call when two teenage boys -- next-door neighbors Jamie (Glen Berry) and Ste (Scott Neal) -- unexpectedly fall in love. This moving slice of affecting kitchen-sink realism from Britain's esteemed Channel Four Films is adapted from the hit West End play penned by Jonathan Harvey, who also directs.

    Directed by:

  • Hettie MacDonald
    • rating:3.7.png 3.7 Average Rating


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    The Promise
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    The Promise

    1995
    Just after the construction of the Berlin Wall, five friends attempted to escape to West Germany. Sophie (Corinna Harfouch) made it; her beloved Konrad (August Zirner) did not. For the next three decades, Konrad uses his position as a prominent scientist to try to meet with Sophie. There is little, however, that escapes the watchful eye of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, and Konrad and Sophie will pay with their lives if they're caught.

    Directed by:

  • Margarethe von Trotta
    • rating:3.1.png 3.1 Average Rating


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    The Hurt Locker
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    The Hurt Locker

    2008
    Kathryn Bigelow directs this gripping drama (winner of the Best Picture Oscar) following one of the U.S. Army's elite EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) teams operating in the ferocious war zone of Iraq. As the squad identifies and dismantles improvised explosive devices and other bombs, they must also contend with the frayed nerves and internal conflicts that arise from living in constant peril. Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse and Guy Pearce star.

    Directed by:

  • Kathryn Bigelow
    • rating:3.9.png 3.9 Average Rating


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    Television
    Paris: Luminous Years
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    Paris: Luminous Years

    2010
    In the early 20th century, Paris was the glittering crossroad of the avant-garde art world, where Pablo Picasso mingled with Gertrude Stein and Jean Cocteau, and this vivid documentary charts its conversion from creative hotbed to cultural zeitgeist. Radicals in dance, film, music and literature flocked from all over, and key figures such as Ernest Hemingway, Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp recount their roles in the historic birth of modernity.

    Directed by:

  • Perry Miller Adato
    • rating:3.7.png 3.7 Average Rating


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    Daria: Is It College Yet?
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    Daria: Is It College Yet?

    2002
    The sarcastic animated high schooler returns in this feature-length production. Daria's finishing up high school, but she has to decide which institution of higher learning is best suited to an antisocial intellectual with a passion for pizza!

    Directed by:

  • Karen Disher
    • rating:3.8.png 3.8 Average Rating


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    Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: Season 6
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    Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: Season 6

    1997
    Although the sixth year proved the last for this Emmy-winning television Western, the show remained replete with intriguing characters and memorable stories about gallantry, romance and family values. When Colorado Springs falls on financial hard times, Dr. Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour), her husband (Joe Lando) and the rest of the town's denizens try to make the best of it. John Schneider joins the regular cast as new sheriff Daniel Simon.

    Directed by:

  • Bethany Rooney
    • rating:3.8.png 3.8 Average Rating


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    Frontline: Facing Death
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    Frontline: Facing Death

    2010
    This powerful installment of the long-running PBS series takes a look at the complex -- and often agonizing -- end-of-life decisions that must be made by physicians, those facing the prospect of death and their loved ones. Doctors, patients and families discuss key issues such as when to disconnect a breathing tube, when to continue treatment, when to bring in hospice and the affordability of the mounting costs associated with end-of-life care.

    Directed by:

  • Miri Navasky
  • Karen O'Connor
    • rating:3.8.png 3.8 Average Rating


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    Gay & Lesbian
    Tomboy
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    Tomboy

    2011
    Uncomfortable living as a girl, 10-year-old Laure decides to spend her childhood as Michael. When Michael's family moves to rural France, the child wins friends and comes to understand the complexities of gender.

    Directed by:

  • rating:4.1.png 4.1 Average Rating


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    Stranger Inside
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    Stranger Inside

    2001
    Treasure Lee (Yolonda Ross) is a bad girl on the move ... out of "juvenile" and into the state penitentiary. There, she befriends Brownie (Davenia McFadden), a lifer who deals drugs, using an extended family of loyal girls who swear their undying allegiance to the cell-block mama. But Brownie's charisma shields a malevolence that just might put Treasure in harm's way.

    Directed by:

  • Cheryl Dunye
    • rating:3.3.png 3.3 Average Rating


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    Making Grace
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    Making Grace

    2005
    In this intimate documentary, filmmaker Catherine Gund examines lesbian motherhood through the eyes of longtime partners Ann Krsul and Leslie Sullivan, who desperately want to have a child. Charting their unconventional path toward parenthood, from the first tough decisions -- such as choosing a sperm donor and deciding who will carry the child -- to their joy at the birth of baby Grace, this moving film reveals a uniquely emotional journey.

    Directed by:

  • Catherine Gund
    • rating:3.1.png 3.1 Average Rating


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    Little Man
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    Little Man

    2005
    Turning the camera lens on her own life, lesbian filmmaker Nicole Conn captures the heart-wrenching process of having a surrogate child with her life partner, political activist Gwen Baba, only to have the baby be born 100 days too early. Weighing just 1 pound with a heart the size of a cashew, the tiny infant Nicholas fights valiantly for his own survival while his parents fight to keep their commitment alive.

    Directed by:

  • Nicole Conn
    • rating:3.5.png 3.5 Average Rating


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    Now and Then
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    Now and Then

    1995
    Waxing nostalgic about the bittersweet passage from childhood to puberty in this tender coming-of-age tale, four childhood girlfriends -- Teeny, Chrissy, Samantha and Roberta -- recall the magical summer of 1970. During their walk down memory lane, they reconcile experiences with boys, secrets, bullies and more. Lesli Linka Glatter directs; Gaby Hoffmann, Ashleigh Aston Moore, Cloris Leachman, Thora Birch and Christina Ricci co-star.

    Directed by:

  • Lesli Linka Glatter
    • rating:3.8.png 3.8 Average Rating


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    Now and Then (1995)
    A heartwarming movie about four childhood girlfriends who, in adulthood reunion, relive their experience of the life-changing summer of 1970, including a mystery death, divorce, standing up to the boys, first kiss, and the meaning of true friendship. Each explores her unique identity amidst family and friends. Beautifully directed by Lesli Linka Glatter.
    - Frances   
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