Great debut features from female directors | Little White Lies

Sponsored

Great debut fea­tures from female directors

31 Jul 2020

Young woman with long, wavy hair wearing a peach-coloured jacket, looking pensive.
Young woman with long, wavy hair wearing a peach-coloured jacket, looking pensive.
To cel­e­brate the release of Make Up, here are five mag­nif­i­cent first films by some seri­ous­ly tal­ent­ed women.

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.

A young woman with long blonde hair wearing a green jacket, her eyes closed and her head tilted back.

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.

Blonde girl in red coat sitting in chair.

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.

Three people relaxing by a lake, surrounded by trees and vegetation.

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.

Woman in hijab standing near bicycles and motorbikes on street with bunting.

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.

Two women with long, curly hair looking contemplative on a beach.

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.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.