100 great movies by female direc­tors – part 9

Pick­ing a favourite Joan­na Hogg movie out of Unre­lat­ed, Arch­i­pel­ago and Exhi­bi­tion is basi­cal­ly futile. Each slays its sub­ject while being dis­tinct­ly the work of a woman who is push­ing cin­e­ma to a fas­ci­nat­ing­ly per­son­al place. 2007’s Unre­lat­ed showed what hap­pens when we attempt to run away from respon­si­bil­i­ties, while 2013’s Exhi­bi­tion method­i­cal­ly unpacks a mar­riage that is either fail­ing or flour­ish­ing, depend­ing on view­er per­spec­tive. Arch­i­pel­ago – her mid­dle child – is a fam­i­ly tract. Hogg’s art-house friend turned Mar­vel supervil­lain, Tom Hid­dle­ston, sports a curly mop as Edward, stretch­ing his polite British man­ner­isms across a sea of sim­mer­ing ten­sion. Con­ver­sa­tion is stilt­ed and argu­ments are heard bounc­ing through walls and up stair wells. Cam­era angles cut peo­ple off and no one can pitch their thoughts to align with another’s fre­quen­cy. Arch­i­pel­ago is about stilt­ed fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and the dif­fi­cul­ty of com­mu­ni­cat­ing. My dad fell asleep as we watched it togeth­er, which just goes to show how impos­si­ble it is to make your flesh and blood sign up to what you find impor­tant. Sophie Monks Kaufman

Full dis­clo­sure: I wasn’t over­ly enam­oured with The Self­ish Giant, Clio Barnard’s anti-fairy tale from 2013. It’s not a bad film – not by any stretch – it just didn’t quite grab me the way I’d hoped. Per­haps that first view­ing expe­ri­ence was doomed from the start. After all, the British director’s pre­vi­ous (and best) film, The Arbor, had affect­ed me so pro­found­ly as to fos­ter unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly high expec­ta­tions for her next project. Barnard employs an exper­i­men­tal docu-dra­ma approach, enlist­ing actors to lip-synch inter­view extracts, in order to blur the line between fact and fic­tion. Art, mem­o­ry, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and truth are skil­ful­ly decon­struct­ed in what is osten­si­bly an uncon­ven­tion­al por­trait of ​’80s play­wright Andrea Dun­bar and the But­ter­shaw Estate in Brad­ford where she grew up. Dun­bar died aged 29 after sud­den­ly suc­cumb­ing to a brain haem­or­rhage in her local pub – a des­per­ate­ly sad end for this ​“genius from the slums” – leav­ing behind two orphaned daugh­ters, Lor­raine and Lisa, who went on to lead dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent lives. Barnard’s film is a requiem for Dunbar’s chil­dren – not just Lor­raine and Lisa, but every­one through­out work­ing-class Britain. Adam Wood­ward

After the remark­able suc­cess of Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik slipped off the radar. When she resur­faced with a doc­u­men­tary three years lat­er, it only made her absence all the more con­found­ing: why would some­one with such a stag­ger­ing fac­ul­ty for work­ing with actors decide to forego work­ing with them in the first place? As sober­ing as a crack of cold moun­tain air, this brac­ing­ly imme­di­ate sto­ry of fam­i­ly, hon­our, and Oxy­Con­tin in the Ozarks nev­er feels the least bit pret­ti­fied for coastal audi­ences – it’s all the more impres­sive now that Jen­nifer Lawrence’s lead­ing turn is still so instinc­tive and true, quick­ly shiv­er­ing off the bur­den of the fame that the actress was able to lever­age from it. Like Break­ing Bad with­out the warm lay­ers of glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, Winter’s Bone is a col­lec­tion of per­for­mances so real that doc­u­men­tary might have been the only log­i­cal place for its direc­tor to go next. David Ehrlich

The mood that Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gari evokes in Atten­berg is as dead­pan as the films of countryman/​collaborator, Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, but with sin­cere emo­tion­al moti­va­tion dialled up to a dis­cernible lev­el. The divine Ari­ane Labed (Alps, The Lob­ster) stars as Mari­na, the lead half of a pair of female friends. A key plea­sure is watch­ing the duo, in near­ly iden­ti­cal dress­es, silent­ly per­form­ing a syn­chro­nised march/​dance/​movement thing as grav­el crunch­es beneath sen­si­ble black boots. Their activ­i­ties are respite for Mari­na who dotes on her sick dad. ​‘Dotes’ is a mis­lead­ing term because it evokes sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. Daugh­ter and father com­mu­ni­cate in their own strange short­hand which some­times extends to leap­ing about mak­ing mon­key nois­es. Mari­na looks to the ani­mals fre­quent­ly in the form of the stars of David ​“Atten­berg” Attenborough’s pro­grammes. Atten­berg is delight­ful­ly odd, paced with enough paus­es for peace and enough dia­logue for diver­sion. There is some­thing scratchin’ from under­neath the stylised sur­face: a girl want­i­ng to become a woman on her own bes­tial terms. SMK

Dreams of a Life is basi­cal­ly the cel­lu­loid equiv­a­lent of a mon­u­ment to an unknown sol­dier. The sol­dier in ques­tion was Joyce Vin­cent, a woman found dead in her north Lon­don flat after lying there for three years undis­cov­ered amid half-wrapped christ­mas presents. Car­ol Mor­ley read a brief news­pa­per arti­cle out­lin­ing the case and was so moved that a per­son could fall off the face of the earth with­out any­one notic­ing that she dug deep into the details of Joyce’s life. Part recre­ation (Zawe Ash­ton fills in for Joyce), part inter­views with those that once knew the deceased, Dreams of a Life is whol­ly a stir­ring look at how easy it is fall through the cracks. Mor­ley is dogged in putting togeth­er the frag­ments of this human mys­tery and in track­ing down the peo­ple whose lives Joyce touched before drift­ing away. They just pre­sumed she had moved onto oth­er things and are dazed and guilt-strick­en by the gris­ly truth. Mor­ley is not overt­ly preach­ing to us to reach out more gen­er­ous­ly and more fre­quent­ly and yet I know I’m not the only one who came out of the screen­ing and imme­di­ate­ly phoned an old friend. SMK

A com­ing-of-age sto­ry that cap­tures the puri­ty and con­fu­sion of youth as per­fect­ly as any movie ever made, Tomboy 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. Sciamma’s frank approach to this scene func­tions like a silent con­fes­sion – we feel how inva­sive it is to learn what Lau­re so des­per­ate­ly wants to keep pri­vate, but the infor­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed dis­crete­ly enough for us to intu­it how irrel­e­vant Laure’s gen­i­tals are to her gen­der. Few film­mak­ers love their char­ac­ters so much, and even few­er so sen­si­tive­ly under­stand how they strug­gle to become them­selves. This is a per­fect movie, 82 min­utes of cor­rect choic­es all work­ing in sync. DE

When it comes to screen per­for­mances by actors who are far too young to under­stand where they were, what they were doing and even what a movie is, then Jacques Doillon’s Ponette from 1996 holds some kind of giant, triple-tier victor’s tro­phy. While this bare­ly 60-minute fea­ture from French direc­tor Valérie Mas­sa­di­an is very sim­i­lar in tone and style, it is astound­ing in its own right. Nana is the smi­ley, care­free tot who is caught up in the blaz­ing row between her par­ents, though she has no com­pre­hen­sion of the extreme vio­lence which almost (but not quite) brush­es up against her charmed exis­tence. Hint­ing at goth­ic hor­ror, the crux of the sto­ry takes place in a remote wood­land cab­in where Nana and moth­er exist in rel­a­tive peace, yet when the lat­ter finds cause to head away, she leaves her defence­less daugh­ter alone. What could so eas­i­ly have been an alarmist social issues dra­ma about par­ent­hood and fam­i­ly degra­da­tion, Nana instead cel­e­brates the inno­cence and free­dom that comes from emo­tion­al imma­tu­ri­ty, the director’s sen­sa­tion­al movie hark­ing back some­thing that’s almost a hard-nosed, clas­sic-era B‑movie, and almost a mag­i­cal real­ist rever­ie in the Lewis Car­roll mould. David Jenk­ins

You may not recog­nise the name but the face will be famil­iar. Mania Akbari was the main actor who starred in Abbas Kiarostami’s 2002 film, Ten, her now-icon­ic image seared onto the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness via a cam­era locked to the dash­board of a car as she dri­ves around Tehran and inter­acts with all ech­e­lons of soci­ety. The sub-theme of female empow­er­ment in that film is car­ried over to Akbari’s own remark­able 2011 direc­to­r­i­al project, One. Two. One., which charts the slow but steady rein­te­gra­tion of a woman back into soci­ety fol­low­ing an acid attack to her face. Play­ing out in a series of care­ful, dole­ful, con­ver­sa­tion­al vignettes, Akbari refus­es to make this a film which accepts women as sec­ond class cit­i­zens, instead plac­ing the focus on fem­i­nin­i­ty, beau­ty and body image. Though some might spy Akbari’s cre­ative roots as a some-time video artist in the com­po­si­tions and the relaxed, not-quite-nat­u­ral­is­tic tem­po of the dia­logue, there’s a col­lec­tive pow­er to these scenes. It’s a film which shows how sim­ple the process of gen­der equal­i­ty could be, but the sense of hope is always dashed with a hint of play­ful resent­ment rather than all-out anger. DJ

When Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure played at the 2014 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, a small but sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the audi­ence were, pos­si­bly under their stale breath, hol­ler­ing the words, ​“Julia Lokev got their first!” And they’d be right; in 2011, Lok­tev unveiled her fol­low-up to 2006’s super intense sui­cide bomber dra­ma, Day Night Day Night, and many were not entire­ly sure what they’d seen. Gael Gar­cía Bernal and Hani Fursten­berg star as a loved-up pix­ie cou­ple. So loved up, they’re actu­al­ly rather unbear­able. They hold hands, they nuz­zle, they call each oth­er pet names as they skip and can­ter through the Cau­ca­sus moun­tain range – a true vision of hap­pi­ness. And then some­thing hap­pens. It’s a ran­dom event, com­plete­ly spur of the moment, which requires that our heroes react with their hearts rather than their heads. And from that point for­ward, the emo­tion­al dynam­ic is flipped on its head. There’s no more hand-hold­ing, no more nuz­zling, no more pet names and no more skip­ping and can­ter­ing. It’s some­thing else. Not hatred – some­thing more com­plex. Lok­tev insists that the audi­ence takes sides in the film’s sec­ond half, which is bold and bril­liant move. DJ

You often hear crit­ics talk about cer­tain films as being ​‘per­son­al’ works, but what does that real­ly mean? Sure, a direc­tor may choose to draw upon a first-hand expe­ri­ence or invest an ele­ment of auto­bi­og­ra­phy into a project, though by that def­i­n­i­tion ​‘per­son­al’ could be used to describe prac­ti­cal­ly every film ever made. Sarah Polley’s 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Sto­ries We Tell, is a per­son­al film, and yet to use that word feels some­how reduc­tive. Because while the sub­ject mat­ter is espe­cial­ly close to Pol­ley, in truth this is a film about all of us. A con­stant­ly sur­pris­ing, end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing fam­i­ly por­trait in which the para­dox­es of the human con­di­tion are picked apart and laid bare over the course of 109 dev­as­tat­ing­ly bril­liant min­utes. It’s a film that is per­haps best expe­ri­enced alone, though if your imme­di­ate reac­tion is any­where near as intense as ours you’ll find your­self reach­ing out to a loved one the sec­ond the cred­its roll. AW

Read more 100 great movies by female direc­tors: 1 – 10 | 11 – 20 | 21 – 30 | 31 – 40 | 41 – 50 | 51 – 60 | 61 – 70 | 71 – 80 | 91 – 100