One of the movie-related challenges I try to complete every year is 52 Films By Women challenge…. that is to watch at least one film directed by women per week. Seems pretty easy right? Especially since there is better female representation behind the camera than ever before, though of course we still have a long way to go. Well, I wish I could say I’ve completed the entire challenge, but I’ve only managed to complete 70% of it, which means I have to do better next year!

Here are the list of films I saw. Though I haven’t reviewed them all, I briefly talked about most of these in my monthly recap.

1. Promising Young Woman
2. Raya and the Last Dragon – review
3. One Night in Miami
4. Where Hands Touch
5. Orlando
6. Things Heard and Seen
7. Love It Was Not (doc)
8. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
9. Antoinette dans les Cevennes
10. The Assistant
11. Rita Moreno (doc)
12. Black Widow – review
13. Last Letter From Your Lover – review
14. Love Sarah – review
15. CODA – review
16. The Girl In The Book
17. Reminiscence – review
18. The Souvenir
19. Love & Basketball
20. Our Kind Of Traitor
21. Worth – review
22. My Name is Pauli Murray – review
23. Good On Paper
24. Proxima
25. I Am Woman
26. I’m Your Man – review
27. Sounds Like Love
28. Eternals – review
29. Forty Year Old Version – review
30. Passing – review
31. The Power of the Dog – review
32. The Matrix Resurrections – review
33. The Zookeeper’s Wife
34. Ron’s Gone Wrong
35. The Lost Daughter – review

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TV SERIES/LIMITED SERIES CREATED/WRITTEN BY WOMEN

1. Dix pour cent AKA Call My Agent (S4) – Netflix
2. The Nevers – 2021 (S1) – HBO Max
3. The Pursuit of Love – 2021 (Miniseries) – Amazon Prime
4. Gold Digger – 2019 (Miniseries) – Sundance Now

I highly recommend all of these and they’re available to stream in various platforms listed above. I’d say my fave out of the four is definitely the French series Call My Agent, which sadly ended with season 4. It’s absolutely hilarious and likely pretty accurate too given it was created by actual former talent agents. I might have to rewatch the whole thing all over again… it’s so binge-worthy!

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So out of the 35 films by women, here are my picks of the 10 Best:

Top 5 favorite new releases:

CODA

Black Widow

I’m Your Man

The Power Of the Dog

The Lost Daughter

I’m glad to see such a great variety of genres amongst these female-directed films… from superhero movie, sci-fi comedy, to psychological dramas, these films couldn’t be more different from each other but they show the sheer talent behind the camera. In addition to being directed by women, The Lost Daughter + The Power of the Dog both have female DPs, enhancing the female gaze storytelling perspective even more.

Top 5 favorite older movies:

Love & Basketball

Forty Year Old Version

Proxima

Our Kind Of Traitor

Orlando

I don’t know how I could’ve missed Love & Basketball which is such a terrific love story! Proxima is an underrated sci-fi drama about a female astronaut trying to balance her mission and being apart from her 8-year-old daughter, Eva Green is really good in the lead role. Our Kind of Traitor is a suspenseful spy thriller from British filmmaker Susanna White, highly recommend it for spy movie fans. I’ve reviewed Forty Year Old version which would’ve made my top 10 of 2020 if I had seen it sooner. Lastly, Orlando is Sally Potter’s adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel starring the one and only Tilda Swinton.

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I found this great link from BFI – The female gaze: 100 overlooked films directed by women

I’ve already added a few films to my watch-list, fortunately some of them are on streaming like Netflix or HBO Max. So no excuse not to watch more films by women 😉

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Which of these films have you seen and which are your favorites?

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