10 Female Filmmakers Who Broke Film’s Biggest Barriers
In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director. It took 82 ceremonies. The 10 female filmmakers below each broke a barrier like that, at the Oscars, at Cannes, at Venice or at the box office. They’re ranked by how big a door each one opened, and all 10 are still making films.
TL;DR: Ten Firsts, One Stubborn Number
Female filmmakers have now won Best Director three times, won the Palme d’Or three times and made a $1.44 billion hit. The hiring numbers haven’t followed. Women directed 13% of the 250 top-grossing films of 2025, down from 16% in 2024.
10) Nia DaCosta
Nia DaCosta became the first Black woman director to open a film at No. 1 at the US box office, with Candyman in 2021.
- From: United States
- Breakthrough: Little Woods (2018)
- The barrier: First Black woman director with a No. 1 opening in the US. First Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios film
- Key films: Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
- Big wins: Candyman’s No. 1 opening weekend, August 2021
- Fun fact: Jordan Peele co-wrote and produced Candyman
Little Woods, her first feature, followed two sisters scraping by in a North Dakota oil town. Three years later DaCosta was directing Candyman for Universal and MGM, and it went straight to the top of the box office.
The Marvels opened to $46.1 million, the best opening ever for a Black woman director. It then became the lowest-grossing film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. DaCosta kept moving. Hedda put Tessa Thompson in Ibsen’s lead role, and The Bone Temple, released in January 2026, handed her the 28 Years Later franchise.
9) Coralie Fargeat
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance became the first horror film directed by a woman to be nominated for Best Picture.
- From: France
- Breakthrough: Revenge (2017)
- The barrier: Best Picture and Best Director nominations for a horror film by a woman
- Key films: Revenge, The Substance
- Big wins: Best Screenplay at Cannes (2024), five Oscar nominations and a win for Makeup and Hairstyling
- Fun fact: She turned down Marvel’s Black Widow to finish The Substance
Horror rarely gets near the Best Picture race. The Substance got there with Demi Moore as a fading TV star who takes a black-market drug that splits her into a younger version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley.
Fargeat wrote it about the pressure on women to stay young, and she didn’t soften a frame of it. That’s the barrier. A woman made one of the most extreme films of 2024, and the Academy nominated her for directing it. If you like horror that carries a message, see our allegory examples in horror movies.
8) Mati Diop
Mati Diop became the first Black woman director to compete for the Palme d’Or, with Atlantics in 2019, and she went home with the Grand Prix.
- From: France, with Senegalese roots
- Breakthrough: Atlantics (2019)
- The barrier: First Black woman director in the Cannes main competition
- Key films: Atlantics, Dahomey
- Big wins: Grand Prix at Cannes (2019), Golden Bear at Berlin (2024)
- Fun fact: Her uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, directed the Senegalese classic Touki Bouki (1973)
Atlantics is a ghost story set in Dakar. Construction workers who haven’t been paid leave by boat for Spain, and the young women they leave behind start to change. Diop shot it mostly in Wolof, with first-time actors.
Five years later she won Berlin’s top prize with Dahomey, a documentary about 26 royal treasures France returned to Benin in 2021. Two features, two of Europe’s biggest prizes.
7) Justine Triet
Justine Triet became the third woman to win the Palme d’Or, with Anatomy of a Fall in 2023.
- From: France
- Breakthrough: Age of Panic (2013)
- The barrier: Third woman to win the Palme d’Or, and an Oscar for the screenplay
- Key films: Age of Panic, Victoria, Sibyl, Anatomy of a Fall
- Big wins: Palme d’Or (2023), Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Arthur Harari
- Fun fact: Messi, the border collie who plays Snoop, won the Palm Dog at Cannes
Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama that never tells you whether the wife killed her husband. Sandra Hüller plays a German novelist on trial in France, and much of the film is people arguing about a marriage in French and English.
It earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Triet and Harari, her partner, won for the script, which is a good reason to read it next to our screenwriting guide. Her next film, Fonda, is an English-language thriller with Mia Goth.
6) Julia Ducournau
Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or for Titane in 2021, the first woman to win it without sharing the prize.
- From: France
- Breakthrough: Raw (2016)
- The barrier: First woman to win the Palme d’Or outright
- Key films: Raw, Titane, Alpha
- Big wins: Palme d’Or (2021), Queer Palm for Alpha (2025)
- Fun fact: At a Toronto screening of Raw, audience members fainted and paramedics were called
Jane Campion shared her 1993 Palme with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. So for 28 years, no woman had won Cannes’ top prize alone. Ducournau did it with a body horror film about a serial killer who gets pregnant by a car.
Jury president Spike Lee blurted out the winner at the start of the ceremony, so the moment came out backwards. Her third film, Alpha, split critics at Cannes in 2025. Ducournau has said she’d rather be called a filmmaker than a woman filmmaker.
5) Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay became the first Black woman to direct a film with a budget over $100 million, with A Wrinkle in Time in 2018.
- From: United States
- Breakthrough: Middle of Nowhere (2012)
- The barrier: First Black woman to direct a $100 million film, and the first nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Director
- Key films: Middle of Nowhere, Selma, 13th, A Wrinkle in Time, Origin
- Big wins: Best Director at Sundance (2012), an Oscar nomination for 13th
- Fun fact: She ran her own film publicity firm before she directed a feature
Selma made DuVernay the first Black woman to direct a Best Picture nominee. In 2023, Origin made her the first African American woman in the main competition at Venice. She said she’d been told for years not to bother applying.
She builds doors for other people too. Her company, ARRAY, distributes films by female filmmakers and filmmakers of colour. On her TV series Queen Sugar, she hired women to direct every episode.
4) Greta Gerwig
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie made $1.44 billion worldwide, the most ever for a film directed by a woman on her own.
- From: United States
- Breakthrough: Lady Bird (2017)
- The barrier: First woman to pass $1 billion at the box office as a solo director
- Key films: Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie
- Big wins: Four Oscar nominations, for directing Lady Bird and writing all three films
- Fun fact: Barbie opened the same day as Oppenheimer, July 21, 2023, and “Barbenheimer” was born
Lady Bird, her solo directing debut, made Gerwig only the fifth woman nominated for Best Director. Little Women came next, and it tops our list of movies that pass the Bechdel test.
Frozen II, co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, still made a little more worldwide. But Barbie is the biggest hit ever for a woman directing alone, and the biggest ever in the US for any woman director. Her next film, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, opens wide in cinemas on February 12, 2027, before it reaches Netflix.
3) Chloé Zhao
Chloé Zhao became the first woman of colour to win Best Director, for Nomadland in 2021.
- From: China
- Breakthrough: Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
- The barrier: Second woman, and first woman of colour, to win Best Director. Second woman nominated twice
- Key films: Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, Nomadland, Eternals, Hamnet
- Big wins: Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, Golden Lion at Venice (2020), People’s Choice at Toronto for Nomadland and Hamnet
- Fun fact: Most of Nomadland’s nomads are real people playing themselves, like Linda May and Swankie
Zhao shot her first two features on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota with non-professional actors. In the same year Nomadland won Best Picture, she released Marvel’s Eternals.
Hamnet brought her back to the Oscars in 2026. It earned eight nominations, and Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for playing Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife. Zhao’s Best Director nomination made her only the second woman nominated twice.
2) Jane Campion
Jane Campion was the first woman to win the Palme d’Or, for The Piano in 1993, and later the third woman to win Best Director.
- From: New Zealand
- Breakthrough: Sweetie (1989)
- The barrier: First woman to win the Palme d’Or, and the first woman nominated twice for Best Director
- Key films: Sweetie, An Angel at My Table, The Piano, Bright Star, The Power of the Dog
- Big wins: Palme d’Or (1993), Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (1994), Oscar for Best Director (2022)
- Fun fact: She won a Palme d’Or before The Piano, for her 1986 short film Peel
The Piano tied for the Palme with Farewell My Concubine, then won three Oscars: the screenplay for Campion, Best Actress for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Actress for 11-year-old Anna Paquin. Campion was only the second woman ever nominated for Best Director.
Then she waited 28 years. The Power of the Dog, a western with Benedict Cumberbatch, earned 12 nominations and won her Best Director in 2022. She’s the only woman to win both Cannes’ top prize and the Oscar for directing.
1) Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director, for The Hurt Locker, at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010.
- From: United States
- Breakthrough: Near Dark (1987)
- The barrier: First woman to win Best Director at the Oscars and at the Directors Guild of America
- Key films: Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Detroit, A House of Dynamite
- Big wins: Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture (2010)
- Fun fact: She trained as a painter at the San Francisco Art Institute before film school
Barbra Streisand opened the envelope and said, “Well, the time has come.” Bigelow beat James Cameron, her ex-husband, whose Avatar was the biggest film in the world that year. The Hurt Locker took six Oscars.
She still makes the films she always has: tense, physical and political. A House of Dynamite, a nuclear thriller with Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, premiered at Venice in September 2025 and reached Netflix that October.
Campion has the stronger case on paper. Bigelow still gets number 1.
Campion broke Cannes first and was nominated twice. But Bigelow won with a war film, the genre where Hollywood least expected a woman.
Nobody could argue with a bomb suit and six Oscars. That’s my pick.
Female Filmmakers by the Numbers
Female filmmakers directed 13% of the 250 top-grossing US films of 2025, down from 16% in 2024, according to San Diego State’s Celluloid Ceiling report by Dr. Martha Lauzen.
| 2025 films | Women | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Directors, top 250 films | 13% (16% in 2024, 9% in 1998) | Celluloid Ceiling |
| Directors, top 100 films | 10% | Celluloid Ceiling |
| Top 250 films with no woman director | 86% | Celluloid Ceiling |
| Cinematographers, top 250 films | 7% | Celluloid Ceiling |
| Directors, top 100 films | 8.1%, a seven-year low | USC Annenberg |
The two studies count differently, so the numbers don’t match. They agree on the direction. USC Annenberg counted just nine women among the directors of 2025’s 100 biggest films, down from 13.4% in 2024.
The most useful number is the ripple effect. On 2025 films with at least one woman director, women made up 71% of the writers. On films directed only by men, they made up 11%. Hire one of these female filmmakers and the whole crew list changes.
Where to Start With These Female Filmmakers
Start with The Hurt Locker, then Titane, then Nomadland. That’s a war film, a body horror film and a road movie, all winners of the top prize at the Oscars or Cannes.
Watch the bomb suit walks in The Hurt Locker.
Bigelow holds those shots long enough that you feel the weight in every step. Most films cut away. She makes you walk with him.
Then put Titane and Nomadland back to back. No stat shows the range of female filmmakers better than that double bill.
Female Filmmakers Who Just Missed the List
A reader asked on the old version of this page why Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold weren’t here. Fair question. Each has a great body of work, but their barriers are harder to pin to a single first.
- Lynne Ramsay: We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here (Best Screenplay at Cannes, 2017) and Die My Love (2025) with Jennifer Lawrence
- Andrea Arnold: an Oscar for her short Wasp, then three Jury Prizes at Cannes for Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey
- Sofia Coppola: the first American woman nominated for Best Director, for Lost in Translation, and Best Director at Cannes for The Beguiled (2017)
- Céline Sciamma: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Best Screenplay at Cannes (2019)
- Patty Jenkins: Wonder Woman (2017), the film that proved a woman could direct a superhero blockbuster
FAQs About Female Filmmakers
Who Was the First Female Film Director?
Alice Guy-Blaché. She made La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) in Paris in 1896, one of the first films to tell a story. She later ran her own studio, Solax, in the US. The Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia has her full story.
Which Best Picture Winners Were Directed by Women?
Three: The Hurt Locker (2010), Nomadland (2021) and CODA (2022), directed by Siân Heder. No film directed by a woman has won since.
Who Are Some Famous Female Action Directors?
Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard, The Woman King) and Cathy Yan (Birds of Prey).
The Final Cut on Female Filmmakers
Ten female filmmakers, ten firsts, and nine of them came in 2010 or later. The firsts keep coming. The hiring numbers keep slipping.
Pick one film from this list you haven’t seen and watch it this week. If it makes you want to shoot your own, start with our filmmaking guide, then plan it with our film treatment template and shot list template.
Which first do you think comes next?
Jay Neill
Jay Neill is the founder and managing editor of iFILMthings and believes everyone should have access to the film resources they need to plan their filmmaking project, which is why he’s dedicated iFILMthings to helping all filmmakers.
Reading Jay’s outline on the evolution of female filmmakers highlights a critical shift in the industry worth more scholarly attention. The inclusion of directors like Greta Gerwig and Chloé Zhao, who’ve challenged the traditional narrative structures with their unique storytelling techniques, reflects a broader industry move towards diversity and inclusivity. However, I believe that the piece could benefit from a deeper exploration of how these directors’ works differ from their male counterparts in terms of thematic concerns and narrative styles.
While I respect the filmmakers listed by Jay, I think it’s worth discussing why some names didn’t make the list. Directors like Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold have also made significant impacts. Is there a particular criteria that was used to select these filmmakers?
Good point, Rex. I wonder if the article considers international achievements or focuses on Hollywood-centric work. It could clarify the unique challenges female directors face in different parts of the world.
This article by Jay splendidly marks the significant journey of female directors in the film industry. It’s imperative to acknowledge how early challenges carved the path for the triumphs of contemporary filmmakers. The transformation over years, as highlighted through directors like Kathryn Bigelow and Ava DuVernay, captures the essence and progress not just women in film have made, but the entire industry towards a more inclusive representation. A commendable effort in bringing these stories to the forefront.
Hi Samuel, thank you so much for your kind words and insightful perspective! I completely agree—the journey of female filmmakers is as much about resilience and breaking barriers as it is about transforming the industry for the better. It’s inspiring to see how pioneers like Kathryn Bigelow and Ava DuVernay have paved the way for a more inclusive and representative filmmaking world. I’m thrilled the article resonated with you, and I appreciate your thoughtful engagement!