It Felt Like Love: A cel­e­bra­tion of 50 great female filmmakers

In cel­e­bra­tion of 50 great female film­mak­ers from across the globe, we asked var­i­ous LWLies’ con­trib­u­tors to describe the exact moment when deep admi­ra­tion turned to intense love…

Scot­tish direc­tor Lynne Ram­say has con­stant­ly thrown me for a loop. But it’s always been my fault. Upon watch­ing her first fea­ture in col­lege, 1999’s bruis­ing and sub­lime com­ing-of-age film Rat­catch­er, I felt cer­tain a dynam­ic new voice had been born. It har­boured sim­i­lar qual­i­ties to many of the Neo-Real­ist films I was watch­ing at the time in class: non-pro­fes­sion­al actors, long takes, and on-loca­tion shoot­ing were all part of her process. This wasn’t just pun­ish­ing pover­ty porn; ideas seeped from these cin­e­mat­ic pores.

Yet Ramsay’s approach to the grit­ty mate­r­i­al felt far more kinet­ic than its Ital­ian fore­bears. There was dan­ger in every shot, a sense that the world could col­lapse at a moment’s notice. The sto­ry of a young Scot­tish boy learn­ing to cope with a chang­ing tide in his fam­i­ly made the type of impres­sion that lasts a life­time. Intense, life-chang­ing, dia­logue dri­ven scenes devel­oped slow­ly, and then would cul­mi­nate in an explo­sion of vio­lence or sud­den loss. All of my bear­ings were thrown to the wind. David Jenk­ins

I fell in love with Amy Heck­er­ling when, in Clue­less, Cher (Ali­cia Sil­ver­stone), pressed to talk about that teenage obses­sion, vir­gin­i­ty, says, ​“You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they just go on my feet.” A per­fect­ly pert quip: hard to argue with, and deliv­ered with the sparkling Val­ley Girl ener­gy for which the film (also writ­ten by Heck­er­ling) is just­ly famous. Through­out a some­what patchy fil­mog­ra­phy (includ­ing Look Who’s Talk­ing, episodes of Gos­sip Girl and the unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly clichéd I Could Nev­er Be Your Woman) Heck­er­ling has still proven her­self to be one of the few direc­tors respect­ful of girl­ish fol­ly and pos­sessed of a sly sense of visu­al humour. Abbey Ben­der

I’ve fall­en for Mia Hansen-Løve so many times that it would be impos­si­ble for me to remem­ber the first time it hap­pened, but, as with all such things, the most recent occa­sion is the one I remem­ber most vivid­ly. It was towards the end of Eden, when I noticed that the pro­tag­o­nist – whose stag­nant dream of becom­ing a promi­nent DJ keeps him in a per­ma­nent state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment – hadn’t aged a day dur­ing the twen­ty years of his life cov­ered by the film. That real­i­sa­tion illu­mi­nat­ed some­thing that res­onates through­out each of the four effort­less­ly cool and end­less­ly empa­thet­ic fea­tures that Hansen-Løve has made to date: we all get old togeth­er, but every­one has to grow up on their own. David Ehrlich

I fell in love with Cather­ine Breil­lat when I heard about ​“men­stru­al tea”. Long before I saw any of her films I came across the tan­ta­lis­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing image of a blood­ied tam­pon dipped into water and con­sumed – it was from her unfair­ly maligned 2004 film Anato­my of Hell. What mind would come up with such a charged image of aggres­sive fem­i­nin­i­ty, and why had I not heard of her before? Breil­lat quick­ly became one of my favourite film­mak­ers, and while her work has con­sis­tent­ly been described as cold and detached, for me it leaps off the screen with intense real­ism and sin­cere inti­ma­cy. Jus­tine Smith

I fell in love with Kira Mura­to­va entire­ly by acci­dent. And she’s a direc­tor who – when her movies become a lit­tle more easy to see – I hope this love will blos­som into some­thing deep­er and more mean­ing­ful. I was com­mis­sioned to write a short cap­sule essay on Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1966 exis­ten­tial epic, Andrei Rublev, and my edi­tor said that I’d do well to watch some, what he termed ​“satel­lite titles,” by way of research. One of the films on this list was called Brief Encoun­ters by the Ukrain­ian direc­tor Kira Muratova.

I had nev­er heard of this film nor its mak­er, and from a cus­tom­ary delve through the cat­a­logues of var­i­ous com­mer­cial online film retail­ers, I was left none the wis­er. This woman and her movie – at that time, which was cir­ca 2008 – did not exist. I was utter­ly deter­mined to see the film, espe­cial­ly as it had been aligned along­side a movie which I con­sid­er to be one of cinema’s great mas­ter­works. DJ

I fell in love with Desiree Akha­van at the moment in her debut Appro­pri­ate Behav­iour when the wit­ty sur­face dra­ma gave way to a sprawl­ing net­work of far-reach­ing con­cerns. Akha­van dan­gles com­ic and tit­il­lat­ing cher­ries as she leads us into the neu­rot­ic space of a bisex­u­al New York­er who has yet to come out to con­ser­v­a­tive Iran­ian par­ents and whose soul sus­te­nance is sucked off a dead rela­tion­ship – rec­ol­lect­ed in flash­back. The depth of the sto­ry legit­imis­es Akhavan’s cre­ative tac­tic of using her life as a direct ref­er­ence, some­thing she also does in her excel­lent web series The Slope, which lives up its irrev­er­ent tagline: ​‘Super­fi­cial, homo­pho­bic les­bians’. Sophie Monks Kaufman

I fell in love with Mania Akbari’s work from the moment I saw the very first sequence of her 2011 film One.Two.One. That first sequence, over five min­utes long, beau­ti­ful and com­plex, could only be made by a film­mak­er com­plete­ly in con­trol of her medi­um, unafraid of being provoca­tive, who under­stood the pol­i­tics of gen­der and also the rela­tion­ship of art to the real­i­ty of life around her.

So then I just had to learn more about Mania and find a way to see all her work that I could access. Her one and only ​‘act­ing’ role was as star of Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. I learned about her sub­se­quent move into film­mak­ing and the three films which fol­lowed, the fac­ing of her own mor­tal­i­ty dur­ing a bat­tle with breast can­cer, and then her dev­as­tat­ing deci­sion to go into exile from her coun­try, Iran, when it became obvi­ous that the author­i­ties there would always find a way of not allow­ing her films to be seen. It’s then that I under­stood a lit­tle of what went into mak­ing Mania Akbari, the bold and coura­geous and rad­i­cal film­mak­er that she is. Mehel­li Modi

I fell in love with Claire Denis the moment in 1996’s Nenette et Boni when the rhyth­mic knead­ing of piz­za dough turned into out­right mas­tur­ba­tion. Denis reg­u­lar Gré­goire Col­in plays a piz­za mak­er who lusts for a near­by bak­er, and one day the act of pound­ing out flour gets too sug­ges­tive­ly over­whelm­ing to ignore. It’s a great moment because it left me hang­ing as a view­er: one moment I was won­der­ing if my over­heat­ed teen brain was leap­ing to poly­mor­phous­ly per­verse con­clu­sions about the increas­ing­ly fran­tic slap­ping sounds onscreen, the next moment I knew that I actu­al­ly hadn’t over­reached. Vadim Rix­zov

I fell in love with Nicole Holofcener when I watched her 2001 film, Love­ly & Amaz­ing, and observed the sub­lime­ly ridicu­lous yet touch­ing role she had writ­ten for Raven Good­win – then aged nine. Her char­ac­ter, Annie is the youngest of three sis­ters and is a tub­by black anom­aly next to alabaster reeds, Cather­ine Keen­er and Emi­ly Mor­timer. Of the many con­cerns the old­er sis­ters have, Annie is not always num­ber one. She han­dles this by feign­ing adult­hood in a way that is endear­ing­ly at odds with her ram­pant imma­tu­ri­ty. Holofcener cre­ates airy envi­ron­ments and gives her char­ac­ters the space to breathe and grow into their own eccen­tric shapes. SMK

I first fell in love with Josephine Deck­er in a bland, cor­po­rate room in an office build­ing sit­u­at­ed on Berlin’s bland, cor­po­rate Pots­damer Platz. It was dur­ing the 2013 Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, and Deck­er was there doing press for both her debut nar­ra­tive fea­ture, But­ter on the Latch, and its fol­low-up, Thou Wast Mild and Love­ly. I was one of the first jour­nal­ists to sit down with her. With­in moments, we fell into an easy ban­ter, and by the end, the inter­view tran­scend­ed mere curi­ous lines of ques­tion­ing to reach a sin­cere, at times con­fes­sion­al, con­ver­sa­tion. We talked about (and crit­i­cised) the lack of women writ­ing about film, the expec­ta­tions and pres­sures placed on female direc­tors, and sex.

When her press agent came in to ask us to wrap up, Deck­er asked for more time. I was smug­ly pleased, but also gen­uine­ly hap­py that we could keep talk­ing. When we final­ly part­ed ways, exchang­ing emails and promis­es to stay in touch, I felt that with this inter­view I had accom­plished some­thing; that the past few weeks spent in Berlin — where I had avoid­ed any real sem­blance of labour in favour of wal­low­ing in the bleak­ness that is the Ger­man cap­i­tal in win­ter — was now jus­ti­fied. When I stepped out of the inter­view room, I went to check the sound on the tape. I hadn’t pressed record. Kiva Rear­don

I fell in love with Sofia Cop­po­la when I was 16. I was watch­ing Lost in Trans­la­tion, my vision fogged by a stream of salty tears, sob­bing silent­ly in a heap on my bed­room floor as Bob (Bill Mur­ray) and Char­lotte (Scar­lett Johans­son) hugged before part­ing on that busy street. The film’s open­ing shot, then 18-year-old Johansson’s der­rière in see-through peach-pink knick­ers, is one of the film’s famed images. How­ev­er, it is the fol­low­ing frame, of Johans­son sat on her hotel win­dowsill, a lone­ly fig­ure sil­hou­et­ted against a twin­kling Tokyo cityscape, that is emblem­at­ic of all that Cop­po­la does best .Themes of heart­break, iso­la­tion, depres­sion and doubt plague Coppola’s char­ac­ters, in spite of their glossy trap­pings. Her cam­era is drawn to sur­face beau­ty, but to call her cin­e­ma shal­low is to miss her point entire­ly. Her films play in the space between vapid­i­ty, van­i­ty and inte­ri­or depth. Sim­ran Hans

I met Maren Ade briefly once at the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val; I wasn’t quite sure what to say to her, which is appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­ing that her films are strung togeth­er out of awk­ward paus­es and moments of inde­ci­sion. Not that the friend­ly, self-effac­ing woman on the hotel patio bore much resem­blance to her char­ac­ters. In her two ear­ly fea­tures The For­est for the Trees and Every­one Else, Ade has staked out ter­ri­to­ry as a con­nois­seur of human cru­el­ty and frailty. In their best moments, the films show these two qual­i­ties in close prox­im­i­ty to one anoth­er. Adam Nay­man

I love how Aus­tri­an film­mak­er Jes­si­ca Haus­ner makes movies about mir­a­cles. Some­times these can include explo­rations of the super­nat­u­ral­ly eerie (2004’s Hotel), or they can be mir­a­cles of a high­er reli­gious order (2009’s Lour­des) and they can even be the life or death deci­sions we make which appear to defy all known log­ic (2014’s Amour Fou). There’s a cold phi­los­o­phy at play in her work, and some might see her as the female coun­ter­point to the ice­man-in-chief, Michael Haneke. Yet Hausner’s films are per­me­at­ed with bone dry humour and a sense of the absurd. She allows us to snig­ger at human naiveté, while nev­er stray­ing too far from her ambi­tions of hon­esty and earnest­ness. DJ

The moment I fell in love with Mar­jane Satrapi was the when Ryan Reynolds sat down to dis­cuss the psy­chol­o­gy of moral­i­ty and choice with a dog, a cat and a sev­ered head. That’s when it hit me, mid­way through 2015’s The Voic­es: Satrapi’s work is a source of such bril­liance because it dares to con­front the things we’re most afraid to speak of. Death, war, men­tal ill­ness; yet not with that reserved, dig­ni­fied puri­ty of ​‘respectable’ cin­e­ma but with the empa­thy and hon­esty need­ed to embrace life at its most rich and its most absurd. In short, Satrapi makes movies that feel tru­ly alive. Clarisse Loughrey

I first fell in love with Mati Diop in Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum. It was her first role, where she played Joséphine, the young, impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of an immi­grant, Lionel (long­time Denis col­lab­o­ra­tor Alex Descas). Diop was mes­meris­ing. Though 26 at the time, she played Joséphine’s grad­ual indi­vid­u­al­i­sa­tion (and sex­u­al­i­sa­tion) as though she were just dis­cov­er­ing her body and self.

Meet­ing Diop through the eyes of Denis was what I imag­ine it would be like if a best friend intro­duced you to a future life part­ner: this emerg­ing actress came with the high­est pos­si­ble vet­ting — I was com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing her career. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, then, I fell in love with Diop all over again in 2013: dur­ing a ret­ro­spec­tive of Denis’ work at Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val, the French direc­tor select­ed Diop’s A Thou­sand Suns as her Carte Blanche choice. KR

I fell in love with Ava DuVer­nay when the end cred­its rolled on her Mar­tin Luther King/​civil rights, dra­ma Sel­ma. That was the point at which I awoke from the spell the film had cast and began to con­sid­er its cre­ator. DuVer­nay is a savvy craftswoman. Her back­ground as a film pub­li­cist has drummed into her the neces­si­ty of nar­ra­tive hooks and angles. She shoots at del­i­cate polit­i­cal points and hits them with the sure­ty of a Kat­niss Everdeen arrow. Yet she is full of hot feel­ing too. SMK

Hav­ing only direct­ed two films, Russ­ian-Amer­i­can film­mak­er Julia Lok­tev has already estab­lished her­self as a mas­ter of the word­less dra­mat­ic moment. Qui­et, intense pas­sages of emo­tion­al tumult are what ini­tial­ly drew me to the director’s 2005 anti-thriller Day Night Day Night. It’s an impres­sive­ly min­i­mal­ist debut that fol­lows a new­ly recruit­ed sui­cide bomber being prepped for an attack on a tourist des­ti­na­tion in New York City. Despite the pow­der-keg sub­ject mat­ter, Lok­tev man­ages to con­vey a con­sis­tent sense of ambi­gu­i­ty in rela­tion to the char­ac­ters’ fluc­tu­at­ing moti­va­tions. GHJ

Sami­ra Makhmalbaf’s 2000 film Black­boards was the first Iran­ian film I ever saw. It’s about a group of female teach­ers and the var­i­ous alter­nate uses they have for the black­boards they car­ry on their backs, such as shields to pro­tect from fly­ing rub­ble caused by ene­my fight­ers car­pet bomb­ing the moun­tain­sides. I loved it so much that I sought out her pre­vi­ous film, The Apple, which is noth­ing less than a mas­ter­piece. In the Iran­ian tra­di­tion – a tra­di­tion cul­ti­vat­ed by her own father, the great Mohsen Makhmal­baf – it’s a film which blends the poet­ic and the real­is­tic to talk about a soci­ety prone to cen­sure, tyran­ny and inequal­i­ty. DJ

I fell in love with Signe Bau­mane on dis­cov­er­ing her 2008 ani­mat­ed short film series, The Teat Beat of Sex. ​‘Sure­ly you can’t show female sex­u­al­i­ty and everyone’s gen­i­talia so vis­cer­al­ly!’ I thought, in a hap­py shock state. The series is billed as ​‘explic­it­ly edu­ca­tion­al’. Lessons land­ed imme­di­ate­ly. ​‘This is how we blast through asphyx­i­at­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions of fem­i­nin­i­ty!’ Research revealed the exis­tence of a fea­ture that had played film fes­ti­vals but had no the­atri­cal release. In Rocks in my Pock­ets Bau­mane depicts men­tal ill­ness with com­ic verve and shape-shift­ing visu­al flair. SMK

Cast your minds back to the sum­mer of 2010. David Cameron was set­tling into Num­ber 10, unem­ploy­ment was at its high­est lev­el since 1994 and nor­mal ser­vice resumed in England’s World Cup cam­paign as Fabio’s Flops returned home from South Africa fol­low­ing a 4 – 1 shel­lack­ing at the hands of Ger­many. For the work­ing class peo­ple of Britain, these were des­per­ate times. Step for­ward Clio Barnard, who announced her­self as a bold new voice in the social real­ism scene with her vital docu­d­ra­ma debut The Arbor before enhanc­ing her rep­u­ta­tion three years lat­er with The Self­ish Giant, anoth­er stark, essen­tial exam­i­na­tion of pover­ty-strick­en Britain. Adam Wood­ward

I fell in love with Kathryn Bigelow dur­ing my years as a film stu­dent at her alma mater, where I spent hours on end star­ing at the Strange Days poster that hangs in one of the class­rooms. Some­times it seemed like I could learn more about mak­ing movies from that clunky one-sheet than I could from the course. I’ll nev­er for­get the tagline, writ­ten in all low­er­case: ​‘new year’s eve 1999. any­thing is pos­si­ble. noth­ing is for­bid­den.’ Those words seemed to per­fect­ly sum up Bigelow’s ethos as a direc­tor, her career hav­ing been defined by shat­ter­ing ceil­ings and telling sto­ries that oth­er film­mak­ers felt they didn’t have the clear­ance lev­el to tell. I’ve seen most of her movies, but I still haven’t seen Strange Days. Nev­er­the­less, I think I got the mes­sage. DE

I fell in love with Elaine May for the hun­dredth time when I went on YouTube to search out a speech she gave in 2010 in hon­our of her eter­nal com­e­dy part­ner Mike Nichols’ Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute Life­time Achieve­ment award. Tak­ing the stage in front of a black-tie crowd that includ­ed Steven Spiel­berg, Shirley MacLaine, and any num­ber of oth­er lumi­nar­ies, May gave a sev­en-minute mas­ter class in the art of the com­ic mono­logue – a bril­liant­ly paced and deliv­ered stream-of-con­scious­ness rou­tine to equal any of the skits she’d craft­ed decades ear­li­er with the evening’s hon­ouree at her side. ​“This is a very emo­tion­al night for me,” she began. ​“Because 10, 20, 30 years ago tonight… I bought this dress. I bought it for Mike’s first life­time achieve­ment award.” Adam Nay­man

I’ll nev­er for­get the first time I encoun­tered the pro­lif­ic Hed­dy Honig­mann. A large, excit­ed crowd gath­ered in a cin­e­ma in Ams­ter­dam where a fes­ti­val (IDFA) were hon­our­ing the film­mak­er by way of a Mas­ter­class enti­tled Try a Lit­tle Ten­der­ness. In 2014 she became the sec­ond direc­tor ever to receive the festival’s Liv­ing Leg­end award. Just like Padding­ton, Honig­mann is an immi­grant from dark­est Peru where she lived with her Pol­ish Jew­ish par­ents. She has since become a Dutch nation­al treasure.

Her humane, com­pas­sion­ate and inquis­i­tive nature shines bright­ly through all her films. She is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in music, mem­o­ry, the out­sider spir­it and those affect­ed by trau­ma and the men­tal and phys­i­cal dis­place­ment caused by war. She is a keen observ­er who lets her cam­era linger and han­dles her ques­tion­ing with sen­si­tiv­i­ty. But just like, say, Louis Ther­oux or Wern­er Her­zog, she isn’t afraid to ask the dif­fi­cult ques­tions and dig deep­er. Kather­ine McLaughlin

I fell in love with Lau­ra Poitras about 80 min­utes into the world pre­mière of CIT­I­ZEN­FOUR at the 2014 New York Film Fes­ti­val, when the old­er cou­ple sit­ting direct­ly in front of me began to engage in a hushed but dis­tract­ing­ly ani­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er. I want­ed to shush them, but I sure am glad that I resist­ed the temp­ta­tion – when the lights came up, the chat­ty view­ers were revealed to be Edward Snowden’s parents.

As they took to the stage for the post-screen­ing Q&A, it was clear that Snowden’s moth­er and father (Eliz­a­beth and Lon­nie) were over­whelmed by the footage of their fugi­tive whistle­blow­er son now enjoy­ing a rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful life in Rus­sia with his girl­friend. Sure­ly they had been in touch with the 31-year-old ex-pat in the months since he leaked hun­dreds of thou­sands of NSA files to the pub­lic, but Poitras’ doc­u­men­tary seemed to frame Snowden’s efforts in a way that clar­i­fied the con­se­quences of his ordeal for those clos­est to him. DE

Peer pres­sure as a dark grav­i­ta­tion­al force was the sub­ject of Eliza Hittman’s offhand­ed­ly stel­lar 2013 debut fea­ture, It Felt Like Love, about a latchkey New York teenag­er on the prowl for an easy sex­u­al hook-up and, by exten­sion, a queue-jump into adult­hood. You might com­pare the film to Lar­ry Clark’s Kids, though Hittman is less inter­est­ed mak­ing gar­ish state­ments about the cor­rupt, self-abas­ing Youth Of Today than she is explor­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ties and bur­dens of being a young girl left large­ly to her own devices. DJ

There’s a pecu­liar­i­ty among the crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty where cer­tain cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tors like to take own­er­ship of movie direc­tors. That because they loved them first, their love mat­ters more. They take own­er­ship. And, hell, we’ve all done it. See­ing Kel­ly Reichardt’s Old Joy in 2006 was a slow­burn rev­e­la­tion for me, a ​‘small’ movie which focused tight­ly on noth­ing as a way to talk about every­thing. It’s a struc­tural­ly-loose walk­ing-and-talk­ing movie which had had in fact been engi­neered with the utmost pre­ci­sion and sense of purpose.

I recall excit­ed­ly read­ing reviews out of Cannes of her 2008 fol­low-up, Wendy and Lucy, think­ing that her for­ma­tive great­ness had now been set in amber and we had anoth­er mas­ter in our midst. Even­tu­al­ly see­ing the film at a Lon­don press screen­ing, I was reduced to a clam­my mulch, blind­sided by what I had just seen. It harks direct­ly back to the unglam­orous neo­re­al­ist purism of Vit­to­rio De Sica’s Umber­to D, where look­ing at how sim­ple social process­es play out reveal mul­ti­tudes about the bit­ter­sweet harsh­ness of exis­tence. DJ

I fell in love with Kim Longinot­to when it became clear that she is the doc­u­men­tar­i­an I had been look­ing for all my life. This was while watch­ing Dream­catch­er in Feb­ru­ary 2015. I’ve been play­ing catch-up on her back cat­a­logue since – not bing­ing but leisure­ly snack­ing. Each film is to be savoured. ​‘Savoured’ is a word I feel the need to jus­ti­fy con­sid­er­ing that almost every film she makes is mar­i­nat­ed in real-world bru­tal­i­ty. I use it because I savour films that show me dark truths illu­mi­nat­ed by a filmmaker’s brav­ery and bril­liance. SMK

I fell in love with Jodie Mack as soon as she began imi­tat­ing the gui­tar solo from the end of Pink Floyd’s ​‘The Dark Side of The Moon’ with just the waaoooms of her voice. Played over the shred­ding of hun­dreds of old posters, this moment from the finale of Dusty Stacks of Mom, Mack’s 2013 stop-motion rock musi­cal, is the direc­tor at her most sil­ly and smart. The over-the-top bom­bas­tic colours rel­ish in the destruc­tion of the rem­nants of a bygone era, while also sug­gest­ing a cri­tique of the ide­olo­gies that define mod­ern day life. Who says you have to be dead­ly seri­ous to take down cap­i­tal­ism? Who says the avant-garde can’t be fun? Peter Labuza

Some­times it’s love at first sight. Before I saw A Girl at My Door, I had not even heard of July Jung. It is, after all, the writer/director’s first fea­ture. But when an art­house heavy­weight like Lee Chang-dong agreed to come on board as pro­duc­er, and when an actress with the stature of Bae Doona was will­ing to sac­ri­fice her pay to star in the low-bud­get pro­duc­tion, there was good rea­son to sus­pect that this film would be some­thing very spe­cial indeed. Trust me, when this girl comes knock­ing, she proves very hard to resist or ignore. Anton Bitel

I first fell in love with Joan Mick­lin Sil­ver watch­ing the con­clu­sion of Hes­ter Street, her 1975 fea­ture debut, a peri­od piece set in a few square blocks of Man­hat­tan cir­ca 1896. Yankel ​‘Jake’ Bogov­nik (Steven Keats), an Amer­i­can­ised, sec­u­larised Russ­ian Jew, is walk­ing down a mer­can­tile street in the Low­er East Side with his new Amer­i­can­ised, sec­u­larised Pol­ish wife, Mamie (Dor­rie Kavanaugh). After a great deal of trou­ble and mon­ey, Jake has obtained a writ of divorce­ment from his first wife, Gitl (Car­ol Kane), whom he mar­ried years ago in the Old Coun­try before com­ing abroad alone, and whom he has found dowdy and infu­ri­at­ing­ly old-fash­ioned ever since the day she arrived at Ellis Island.

Now Gitl walks the same street with her new part­ner, a Tal­mu­dic schol­ar named Bern­stein (Mel Howard). Both she and Jake have got­ten what they thought they want­ed and are set­ting off to a new begin­ning on the gold-paved streets of the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, but an abid­ing sad­ness hangs over the pro­ceed­ings – one has a sense of the small­ness of these lives, lived at the mer­cy of his­to­ry, fash­ion, and the tec­ton­ic grind of the pass­ing of gen­er­a­tions. Nick Pinker­ton

I fell in love with Agnès Var­da at pre­cise­ly the point where focus turns to a heart-shaped pota­to in her ultra-whim­si­cal 2000 diary film, The Glean­ers and I. That love was nour­ished fur­ther by her abid­ing ded­i­ca­tion to her late hus­band, Jacques Demy, on whom much of her ​’90s work focused, includ­ing the 1991 essay film/​biopic hybrid, Jacquot de Nantes. She’s the sole female mem­ber of nou­velle vague – though she brush­es off the title, a stal­wart of Euro­pean film fem­i­nism, an out­spo­ken cham­pi­on of female film­mak­ing and pos­ses­sor of one of the most kalei­do­scop­i­cal­ly diverse film back cat­a­logues out there. She is, in short, one of the greats. DJ

I fell in love with Lucre­cia Mar­tel at exact­ly the same time as every­one else did: Dur­ing the first five min­utes of La Cié­na­ga, in which the Argen­tin­ian direc­tor zomb­i­fies her country’s help­less mid­dle-class into the cast of the most ter­ri­fy­ing movie that George Romero nev­er made. Also, I fell in love with Lucre­cia Mar­tel at exact­ly the same place as (almost) every­one else did: film school. Few con­tem­po­rary direc­tors have so quick­ly become ingrained in the cur­ricu­lum – La Cié­na­ga was her debut, and it didn’t pre­mière until 2002 – but there’s noth­ing remote­ly aca­d­e­m­ic about Martel’s style. In fact, her films rep­re­sent every­thing they teach you not to do, her fever­ish rhythms and non-lin­ear edit­ing vio­lat­ing the sacro­sanct ​“180 rule” at every avail­able turn in her efforts to sus­tain the sense that her char­ac­ters’ world is decom­pos­ing before your eyes. DE

My rela­tion­ship with the films of Agniesz­ka Hol­land has been a love-hate affair: From admi­ra­tion for her bold, acer­bic fic­tion fea­tures, Woman Alone and Europa, Europa, to dis­ap­point­ments, such as with her remake of Rosemary’s Baby. Still, there is one fea­ture that has turned me into a stead­fast view­er. Based on a news­pa­per sto­ry and veiled in real­ist garb, 1992’s Olivi­er, Olivi­er is a pure blood hor­ror pic­ture, a wrench­ing refram­ing of moth­er­hood as mon­strous. Ela Bit­ten­court

I didn’t fall in love with French-Swiss direc­tor Ursu­la Meier at first sight, as I found her Godar­d­ian debut fea­ture from 2008, Home, to be two thirds of a great movie. A ker­nel of hope for the future was plant­ed and cul­ti­vat­ed, how­ev­er, and when her fol­low-up, Sis­ter, dropped into com­pe­ti­tion at the 2012 Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, a full-blown affair had been insti­gat­ed. It’s hard to talk gen­er­al­ly about Meier’s inter­ests as a film­mak­er, as her two fic­tion fea­tures are very dif­fer­ent in many ways, though the lat­ter of the two presents a film­mak­er in immense con­trol of both her sto­ries and her actors. I’ll be first in the queue with a bul­let when her next fea­ture is revealed to the world. DJ

It was while stalk­ing the career back cat­a­logue of indie ad-lib duo the Duplass broth­ers that my love affair with Lynn Shel­ton began. At its heart, mum­blecore is about cap­tur­ing a cer­tain authen­tic­i­ty. A flex­i­ble, loose­ly sketched out script acts as a spring­board for per­for­mances informed by impro­vi­sa­tion. The resul­tant films cen­tre on the nat­u­ral­is­tic, at times incon­se­quen­tial con­ver­sa­tions between char­ac­ters, often cap­tured in only a hand­ful of pro­longed scenes. Shel­ton employs the use of com­plex yet light­heart­ed nar­ra­tive back­drops in which to illic­it an uncom­fort­able but com­pelling real­ism from her cast. RE

Few films have affect­ed me quite as pro­found­ly or as unex­pect­ed­ly as Sto­ries We Tell. The first time I saw Sarah Polley’s extra­or­di­nary cine-mem­oir was at the 2012 Venice Film Fes­ti­val, where imme­di­ate­ly after the film’s pre­mière I rushed out­side and took out my phone – not to tweet my reac­tion or check my emails as habit typ­i­cal­ly dic­tates but to reach out to a close rel­a­tive. Look­ing back, it’s hard to put a fin­ger on what exact­ly came over me in that moment. I don’t con­sid­er myself a par­tic­u­lar­ly emo­tion­al per­son, and noth­ing about the spe­cif­ic nature of the can­did con­tri­bu­tions from Pol­ley and her fam­i­ly that com­prise this per­son­al inves­ti­ga­tion into iden­ti­ty, mem­o­ry and truth res­onat­ed with me as such. It was sim­ply – I sub­se­quent­ly rea­soned – a beau­ti­ful piece of film­mak­ing. AW

Bar­be­cued grasshop­pers served pip­ing hot on bam­boo skew­ers is, most like­ly, the rea­son most peo­ple would’ve fall­en in love with the South Kore­an-born, US-based writer/​director So Yong Kim. Not through con­sump­tion of this pop­u­lar snack food, but in wit­ness­ing two mop-haired Kore­an tod­dlers tak­ing on the con­cept of eco­nom­ic self-suf­fi­cien­cy by way of cre­at­ing their own ram­shackle food vend­ing busi­ness. This was cen­tral to her 2008 fea­ture Tree­less Moun­tain, which focused on a har­ried dirt-poor moth­er who all-but-aban­doned her two young chil­dren so she could search for her estranged husband.

Far from attempt­ing to pro­duce a hec­tor­ing, out­raged screed on pover­ty and short­falls in social pro­vi­sion for sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies, Kim observes the hon­est fall-out from this sit­u­a­tion: that the kids don’t real­ly under­stand the nature of their predica­ment, that there will be a few tears, but their untaint­ed vision of the world as a benign play­ground will reveal the true tragedy of this neglect. DJ

I fell in love with Gia Cop­po­la dur­ing a car crash. Palo Alto, her one and only fea­ture to date, begins with an unhinged teen accel­er­at­ing a parked sedan direct­ly into a cement wall. Kids. That col­li­sion — and the smash cut to the neon blue title card that imme­di­ate­ly fol­lows — was all it took for me to make room for a new mem­ber of cinema’s great­est dynasty. Of course, any praise of Cop­po­la has to be accom­pa­nied by the stan­dard dis­claimer: While it’s true that her last name may have paved her a rel­a­tive­ly easy road to the director’s chair, the fact that she chose to adapt her first fea­ture from a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by James Fran­co went a long ways towards lev­el­ling out the play­ing field. DE

I only need­ed to see the poster for Atten­berg to fall in love with Greek direc­tor Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gari. That still image: two women with skirts hitched up and hands wrapped under­neath their crotch­es. They’re stand­ing in the glo­ri­ous uni­fi­ca­tion of sis­ter­hood, a silent rebel­lion against the con­straints of tra­di­tion­al fem­i­nin­i­ty. And I fell for it, head over heels. In the way Tsan­gari so often paus­es the nar­ra­tive to cut back to these women, on the same piece of pave­ment, tak­ing iden­ti­cal steps in iden­ti­cal dress­es in some secret rit­u­al of dance. CL

From the omi­nous, dusk-lit open­ing shots of Domin­ga Sotomayor’s bril­liant 2012 debut fea­ture, Thurs­day Till Sun­day, it was obvi­ous that we were in the rar­i­fied com­pa­ny of a spe­cial tal­ent. Hail­ing from Chile and bare­ly scrap­ing 30 years, Sotomay­or announced her­self as a nat­ur­al film­mak­er – aware of space, aware of the frame, aware of how human inter­ac­tions play out with­in the con­fined space of a fam­i­ly car, aware of how a sto­ry devel­ops nat­u­ral­ly, but also aware of more com­plex and unspo­ken issues with­in Chilean soci­ety. DJ

Love and Bas­ket­ball made me like Gina Prince-Bythe­wood. Beyond the Lights made me love her. In cin­e­ma, melo­dra­ma has long been con­flat­ed with the ​‘woman’s pic­ture.’ Schol­ar Maria LaPlace describes this genre as one where, ​“love, emo­tion and rela­tion­ships take prece­dence over action and events.” Films that focus on the hearts and minds of black women are few and far between. Imag­ine my delight, then, when I dis­cov­ered Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights – a sto­ry of self-actu­al­i­sa­tion star­ring brown faces that wasn’t about slav­ery. SH

I fell in love with the idea of Stephanie Roth­man before I’d seen any of her films. The prospect of a kind of fem­i­nist agent provo­ca­teur work­ing inside the grind­house busi­ness was just too good to be true, and if I put off watch­ing her sig­na­ture movie, Ter­mi­nal Island, for some time, it’s part­ly because I was afraid of spoil­ing the idea of her films with actu­al expe­ri­ence. As it hap­pens, Ter­mi­nal Island is every bit wor­thy of its rep­u­ta­tion. One of the female pio­neers to work in exploita­tion idioms, Rothman’s films include the req­ui­site amount of skin, but she is also unique­ly attuned to the par­tic­u­lar haz­ards posed to women, and the resilien­cy with which they man­age to nego­ti­ate them. NP

I fell (even deep­er) in love with Ala­nis Obom­saw­in when she said, ​“The last thing they want­ed was an Indi­an to doc­u­ment any­thing”. This state­ment echoes through Canada’s his­to­ry of geno­cide, oppres­sion and era­sure of native expe­ri­ences, and lies at the heart of Obomsawin’s own rad­i­cal doc­u­men­tary voice. 1971’s Christ­mas at Moose Fac­to­ry is a film told through draw­ings of native chil­dren, and from the very begin­nings of her film­mak­ing career, she gave a voice to her sub­jects. Com­bin­ing her own soft spo­ken­ness with the nar­ra­tion of chil­dren, this film exem­pli­fies the ordi­nar­i­ness of native life, fore­go­ing both the roman­ti­ci­sa­tion and vil­i­fi­ca­tion so present in pop­u­lar cul­ture. JS

I must con­fess that the direc­to­r­i­al oeu­vre of French direc­tor Pas­cale Fer­ran is lit­tle known to me, though I love her nonethe­less. It was more a con­sum­mate affec­tion when see­ing her impas­sioned and hearti­ly erot­ic 2006 take on Lady Chatterly’s Lover, though this devel­oped into all-out ado­ra­tion come half way through her high­ly divi­sive 2014 what­sit, Bird Peo­ple. In that film, a two-part expres­sion­ist essay about per­son­al free­dom set in the high­ly unglam­orous con­fines of an air­port hotel, one char­ac­ter just ran­dom­ly turns into a bird, and spends much of the sec­ond half just… fly­ing around. On paper, it sounds godaw­ful. On the screen, it’s tran­scen­dent and stir­ring­ly bold. DJ

Absence and inti­ma­cy are the twin pil­lars of Joan­na Hogg’s cin­e­ma, in which we are invit­ed to savour the con­tra­dic­tions of authen­tic, lov­ing adult rela­tion­ships set against aus­tere back­drops. In each of her three films to date, 2007’s Unre­lat­ed, 2010’s Arch­i­pel­ago and 2013’s Exhi­bi­tion, the British writer/director’s expert use of space serves to aug­ment the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal dis­con­nect between her char­ac­ters. Yet while Hogg is often spo­ken of in for­mal­ist terms, the unmis­tak­able human curios­i­ty evi­dent in her work means the pre­cise dis­sec­tions of mid­dle class mores that she per­forms are any­thing but sur­gi­cal. Excit­ing­ly, you get the sense the best is still to come. AW

I fell in love with Chan­tal Aker­man some­where between East Ger­many and Moscow. Not lit­er­al­ly, of course, though it may as well be, so evoca­tive and trans­portive is her 1993 mas­ter­piece D’Est. Essen­tial­ly a visu­al diary of the Bel­gian director’s trav­els across the for­mer Euro­pean com­mu­nist bloc, the film (whose title trans­lates as ​‘From the East’) in many ways encap­su­lates the many modes and method­olo­gies with which Aker­man worked through­out the most pro­lif­ic phase of her career.

Like many of Akerman’s films, the pol­i­tics of D’Est are embed­ded in the con­tex­tu­al details of its pro­duc­tion, or felt in the mar­gins of the nar­ra­tive, rather than expli­cat­ed in tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­telling terms. She’s one of the most polit­i­cal film­mak­ers I know, and yet not a sin­gle one of her films is about pol­i­tics, or an over­rid­ing issue, or any­thing so bla­tant­ly top­i­cal. Jor­dan Cronk

I fell in love with Celine Sci­amma when I saw the 10-year-old star of her sec­ond fea­ture com­plete­ly naked. Allow me to explain: Tomboy, a com­ing-of-age sto­ry that cap­tures the puri­ty and con­fu­sion of youth as per­fect­ly as any movie ever made, fol­lows an androg­y­nous kid named Lau­re whose fam­i­ly moves to a new neigh­bour­hood out­side of France. Laure’s sex isn’t revealed until she’s shown tak­ing a bath one evening, the cam­era con­fronting the anatom­i­cal truth that its young sub­ject keeps like a secret. DE

In terms of love, it does help no end that Sal­ly Pot­ter is BFF with Til­da Swin­ton, the star of her rev­o­lu­tion­ary gen­der-switch­ing, time-trav­el­ling 1992 fea­ture, Orlan­do. But I fell in love with Pot­ter after see­ing her star in her own The Tan­go Les­son from 1997. It wasn’t so much that I was instant­ly beguiled by her on-screen pres­ence, nor that the film itself brought on a fren­zy of wild emo­tions. More that it seemed such a bold thing to make after Orlan­do, a film which had the guts to present its own mak­er as some­one utter­ly deter­mined to bet­ter her­self and explore all of life’s poten­tial plea­sures. DJ

“This is the dog’s bol­locks.” It’s not a phrase you would ordi­nar­i­ly expect to hear whilst watch­ing the annu­al gush-a-thon also known as the Acad­e­my Awards. But that is exact­ly why I love Andrea Arnold, who said this to a bewil­dered array of unas­sum­ing, per­ma-tanned Hol­ly­wood types when col­lect­ing her Best Short Film award for Wasp back in 2005. It’s nice to think that per­haps led to cer­tain mem­bers of the Tin­sel­town elite trail­ing the length and breadth of of the Urban Dic­tio­nary for a trans­la­tion of this endear­ing col­lo­qui­al­ism. RE

I don’t know if I exact­ly fell in love with Jen and Sylvia Sos­ka when I saw their 2009 fea­ture debut Dead Hook­er in a Trunk, but the car­toon­ish exploita­tion pas­tiche cer­tain­ly caught my eye. Made for $2500 (and it shows), Dead Hook­er com­pen­sates for its tru­ly low-rent pro­duc­tion with sheer mad­cap punk­ish ener­gy and verve. As well as writ­ing, direct­ing, pro­duc­ing, and doing all their own stunts, Jen and Sylvia also starred as twin sis­ters Geek and Badass – and some­where between those two names/​types lies the sen­si­bil­i­ty of both the film­mak­ers and their ide­al audi­ence. AB

This is an abridged ver­sion of a fea­ture which was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 60: the Eden issue.