101 Movies About Women Directed By Women

With the exception of a few unique properties (The Hunger Games, The Help, Eat Pray Love, Sex and the City, etc), Hollywood has been getting out of the movies-about-women business in the last few years, choosing instead to concentrate on films with more appeal to men in global markets.
They have also been reducing the female content in big theatrical movies, preferring to see what USC studies suggest is fewer women wearing fewer clothes and speaking fewer lines.
As for women directing any of those big films and bringing a female perspective to the content, well it's still a big challenge, but over the decades there have been quite a few entertaining movies about women directed by women, sometimes for theatrical release, sometimes for regular television and more often now for premium cable. This book celebrates a lot of them.
So it’s fun and exciting to offer female film fans this list of 101 Movies About Women Directed By Women, some of which will be familiar (Julie & Julia, Mamma Mia, 27 Dresses), but a lot of them won’t.
Being unfamiliar doesn’t make them uninteresting, since it makes a difference to a movie when women have artistic control of stories about women and the things they care about.
What will certainly be familiar are a lot of the female stars of these 101 movies, including Kirsten Dunst, Nicole Kidman, Ann Hathaway, Kristen Stewart, Kathy Bates, Scarlett Johansson, Natassja Kinski, Carey Mulligan, Emma Watson, Marlo Thomas, Ellen Burstyn, Rachel Leigh Cook, Christina Ricci, Minnie Driver, Hilary Swank, Parker Posey, Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Heather Graham, Dakota Fanning, Bette Midler, Emily Blunt, Salma Hayak, Jennifer Aniston, Melissa Leo, Jessica Lange, Ashley Judd, Holly Hunter, Meryl Streep, Charlize Theron, Kyra Sedgwick, Blake Lively, Wynona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Katherine Heigl, Sandra Bullock, Kim Cattrall, Diane Lane, Cheryl Hines, Demi Moore and many, many more.
There are also a lot of choice men in these films, including Daniel Craig, Nathan Fillion, Viggo Mortensen, Benicio Del Toro, Steve Zahn, Simon Baker, Keanu Reaves, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Bacon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Rudd and others.
A few of these movies were directed by women who are more famous for their acting, including Sally Field, Helen Hunt, Sarah Polley, Jodie Foster, Ida Lupino, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Lee Grant, Angelica Huston and Drew Barrymore.
The content range of these 101 films is remarkable, from tour de force acting performances to character studies to ensemble comedies to love stories to thrillers to family dramas to weird and wonderful stories that defy description.
While we hope you take advantage of this list to try some films you never heard of with actors you don’t know, we’ve also categorized them by type so you can jump to something that appeals to you. Here are some of those categories: People Behaving Badly, Best Friends Forever, Great Women To Know, Crime Doesn’t Pay, Being A "Career Girl", Family At The Heart, Mothers and Daughters, Romance With Laughs, Sisters Stick Together, Religion and Faith, Romance and Love, and In the Midst of Conflict.
The plan is to roll out more of these female-oriented titles in the coming months, starting with Movies About Weddings, Movies About Sisters, Movies About Mothers and so on. We are also interested in hearing any suggestions the public might have for future books (Movies About Divorce has been mentioned more than once), and we'd absolutely love to hear about any great films about women that were overlooked in this list of 101, have been forgotten or simply overlooked by reviewers. With your help, it might be possible to get great women's films like Independence Day (from 1983, with Kathleen Quinlan, Dianne Wiest, Frances Sternhagen and David Keith) available for more women to see.