Historical Female Directed Films

A fashionable Beverly Hills teenager, armed with a credit card and cellular phone, keeps Rodeo Drive in business and plays matchmaker to her friends

Old-fashioned mega-hit about a widowed Seattle dad whose son’s Christmas eve call to a national radio program changes his life.

Persepolis is the poignant story of a young girl coming-of-age in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of precocious and outspoken nine-year-old Marjane that we see a people’s hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power — forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, she outsmarts the “social guardians” and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is palpable. As she gets older, Marjane’s boldness causes her parents to worry over her continued safety. And so, at age fourteen, they make the difficult decision to send her to school in Austria. Vulnerable and alone in a strange land, she endures the typical ordeals of a teenager. In addition, Marjane has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Over time, she gains acceptance, and even experiences love, but after high school she finds herself alone and horribly homesick. Though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society, Marjane decides to return to Iran to be close to her family. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, all the while continuing to speak out against the hypocrisy she witnesses. At age 24, she realizes that while she is deeply Iranian, she cannot live in Iran. She then makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her homeland for France, optimistic about her future, shaped indelibly by her past.

Cultures and families clash in Mira Nair’s exuberant Monsoon Wedding, a mix of comedy and chaotic melodrama concerning the preparations for the arranged marriage of a modern upper-middle-class Indian family’s only daughter, Aditi. Of course there are hitches—Aditi has been having an affair with a married TV host; she’s never met her husband to be, who lives in Houston; the wedding has worsened her father’s hidden financial troubles; even the wedding planner has become a nervous wreck—as well as buried family secrets. But Nair’s celebration is ultimately joyful and cathartic: a love song to her home city of Delhi and her own Punjabi family.

A young FBI recruit infiltrates a gang of surfing Southern Californian bank robbers. Idiotic story somewhat redeemed by exciting action scenes!

Jenna (Keri Russell) works in a diner in a small Southern town and is a genius at creating luscious desserts, but her marriage to an overbearing lout (Jeremy Sisto) makes happiness impossible. When she discovers she is pregnant, she makes plans to skip town before her condition is obvious. However, she begins an affair with the new town doctor (Nathan Fillion), who is the only one who knows her secret.

In turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe, a young woman disguises herself as a man in order to pursue the education traditionally forbidden to Jewish women. Oscar winning score by Bergman-Bergman-LeGrand!

With dreams of winning a national beauty contest, three drag queens travel cross-country until their ’67 Cadillac breaks down in a small, conservative midwestern town.

Remembered as one of the most nightmarish motion pictures of the 1950s, Ida Lupino’s THE HITCH-HIKER remains the only classic film noir directed by a woman. Inspired by the true-life murder spree of Billy Cook, this is the tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip who are held captive by a homicidal drifter and forced to embark on a grim joyride across the Mexican desert. Independently produced, THE HITCH-HIKER tackles an incident that was too brutal for the major studios to consider. Part of the National Film Registry.

Documentary look at the segment of New York City’s gay subculture that participates in drag-queen balls. This is where “voguing” began!

Instead of wanting to be like her older sister, who is preparing to be a traditional Indian wife, young Jess dreams of playing soccer professionally, like her hero David Beckham! Eventually, her family must decide whether or not to let Jess chase her dream – and a soccer ball – in this insightful romantic comedy.