Great debut fea­tures from female directors

There’s noth­ing quite like the feel­ing of dis­cov­er­ing a great film­mak­ing tal­ent, and with the release of Claire Oakley’s debut fea­ture Make Up, a strong new direc­to­r­i­al voice is on the rise. It’s an enchant­i­ng tale of obses­sion and untapped desire set in the eerie world of an off-sea­son car­a­van park, and it fol­lows Ruth, a teenag­er who moves to a remote spot on the Cor­nish coast in order to be with her boyfriend. The lurid world of pen­ny slot machines and screech­ing fox­es is enchant­i­ng at first, but she quick­ly grows sus­pi­cious of her boyfriend, believ­ing he is cheat­ing on her with a mys­tery woman, and she resolves to track her down.

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of great British film­mak­ers such as Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank) and Clio Barnard (The Arbor), it’s a stark, unset­tling com­ing-of-age sto­ry, fea­tur­ing a com­pelling cen­tral per­for­mance from Mol­ly Wind­sor as the young woman dis­cov­er­ing new aspects of her iden­ti­ty which threat­en every­thing she knows about her­self, as well as deft direc­tion from Oakley.

To cel­e­brate the release of Make Up via Cur­zon, we’ve picked out five oth­er amaz­ing debuts that all demon­strate a sim­i­lar for­mi­da­ble tal­ent and vision.

Ital­ian film­mak­er Alice Rohrwacher’s third fea­ture, Hap­py as Laz­zaro, won the Best Screen­play award at Cannes 2018, but her debut fea­ture actu­al­ly pre­miered in the 2011 edi­tion of the fes­ti­val and is just as great. This inti­mate dra­ma fol­lows 13-year-old Mar­ta who has recent­ly moved to a big city from her native Switzer­land and is strug­gling to fit in, not least because she’s begin­ning to ques­tion her Catholi­cism, to the alarm of her fam­i­ly and the local church.

Film­mak­er Nora Fin­gschei­dt plunged years of research into her screen­play for Sys­tem Crash­er, which cen­tres on nine-year-old Ben­ni (a mag­nif­i­cent Hele­na Zen­gel) and her tur­bu­lent expe­ri­ences with­in the Ger­man care sys­tem, where even at her young age, she is already regard­ed as doomed to fail. Shot with unflinch­ing hon­esty and raw ener­gy, it’s a spiky, heart­break­ing look at life for some of the most vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren in society.

Undoubt­ed­ly one of the great­est film­mak­ing tal­ents the Unit­ed King­dom has to offer, Joan­na Hogg has made a num­ber of extra­or­di­nary films which pick apart the lives of com­fort­able mid­dle Eng­lan­ders. She was announced as one to watch with her debut, in which a woman expe­ri­enc­ing rela­tion­ship trou­bles joins her friend’s fam­i­ly on hol­i­day in Tus­cany. After bond­ing with the younger guests on the trip, she starts to alien­ate her host, in this wry­ly-observed sto­ry of vaca­tion woe and mid-life anxiety.

Haifaa al-Mansour’s debut film isn’t just excel­lent – it’s also a record-break­er. The first fea­ture film shot entire­ly in Sau­di Ara­bia, and the first fea­ture direct­ed by a female Sau­di direc­tor, it secured a place in the his­to­ry books for the bold­ness of its pro­duc­tion alone., Yet it’s the fear­less­ness in front of the cam­era that makes it such a joy to watch.

Ten-year-old Wad­j­da dreams of own­ing the green bicy­cle she sees every day on her walk to school so she can race her school friend, Abdul­lah, but cycling is frowned upon for Sau­di girls, so her moth­er won’t buy it for her. She resolves to pay for it her­self, but more obsta­cles slow­ly reveal them­selves along the way. It’s a touch­ing sto­ry of child­hood resilience that shines a light on the enor­mous pres­sures placed upon women in Sau­di Arabia.

A land­mark film in so many ways, Julie Dash’s lush dra­ma about three gen­er­a­tions of Gul­lah women on Saint Hele­na Island is not to be missed. Set in 1902 as the Peazant fam­i­ly pre­pare for migra­tion to the main­land, the film explores the clash between the African tra­di­tions con­tin­ued by the elder mem­bers of their com­mu­ni­ty and the desire for moder­ni­ty exhib­it­ed by some of their younger rel­a­tives. Its for­mal inno­va­tion through non-lin­ear sto­ry­telling and beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy make Daugh­ters of the Dust an incred­i­ble part of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, and all the more impres­sive for being Dash’s debut.

Make Up is in cin­e­mas and avail­able on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma from Fri­day 31 July.