15 Great Movies That Pass the Bechdel Test, Scene by Scene

The Bechdel test asks three questions of a film: are there two named women, do they talk to each other, and is it about something other than a man? The 15 movies that pass the Bechdel test below are ranked by how much of the story the women’s conversations carry. Number 15 scrapes a pass in a few short scenes. Number 1 is almost nothing but women talking.

The 3 Rules of the Bechdel Test

To pass the Bechdel test, a movie needs all three:

1. At least two women, and both have names
2. They talk to each other
3. They talk about something besides a man

One scene is enough. That’s the point, and the problem: the bar is low, and famous films still trip over it.

15) Black Panther (2018)

Yes, Black Panther passes the Bechdel test, but only just, in a few short scenes between its women.

In the casino, Okoye hates the wig her disguise needs, and Nakia teases her about it. Later Shuri talks Nakia through the gear in her lab. That’s a pass.

The dispute on bechdeltest.com is fair. Most of the women’s big conversations are about T’Challa or Killmonger, including the argument over whether to serve the new king. The film gives its women more to do than most superhero films, and it won three Oscars, including Ruth E. Carter’s costumes. The talk still keeps circling back to the men.

14) Moana (2016)

Yes, Moana passes the Bechdel test, through the scenes between Moana and her grandmother.

The scenes with Gramma Tala carry the film’s heart. They talk about the ocean, their ancestors and who Moana is meant to be. On her deathbed, Tala tells her: “You must. The ocean chose you.”

The dispute is a technicality. On screen she’s only ever “Gramma.” Her name, Tala, is in the credits. Moana’s talk with her mother Sina doesn’t help, because it’s about why her father forbids the ocean. So the pass rests on one grandmother.

13) Barbie (2023)

Yes, Barbie passes the Bechdel test, and its sharpest passing scene is Barbie getting told off by a teenager.

Barbie goes looking for the girl who played with her and finds Sasha, who wants nothing to do with her. “You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented,” Sasha says. Later Gloria and Sasha talk about Gloria’s drawings, and Barbie meets Ruth Handler, the woman who invented her.

The dispute is that much of the talk is about the Kens and the patriarchy. And nearly every woman in Barbieland is called Barbie, which makes the “two named women” rule funny. Barbie still made about $1.44 billion and was 2023’s biggest film worldwide.

12) Bridesmaids (2011)

Yes, Bridesmaids passes the Bechdel test, because its real love story is a friendship.

Annie is losing her best friend to a wedding and to Helen, the perfect new friend. Their fights are about money, jealousy and who knows Lillian best. Megan’s tough-love talk to Annie passes too.

The opening brunch doesn’t count, because it’s about Annie’s sex life with Ted. The dispute on bechdeltest.com is that the whole film orbits a wedding. But the wedding is the setting. The story is Annie and Lillian. It earned Wiig and Mumolo an Oscar nomination for the screenplay.

11) Legally Blonde (2001)

Yes, Legally Blonde passes the Bechdel test, and wins its big case with a question about hair.

The film starts with Elle chasing her ex to Harvard, so a lot of early talk is about a man. It passes once Elle gets to work. Her talks with Paulette at the salon and Vivian at the library are about law school and friendship.

Then comes the trial. Chutney claims she was in the shower and didn’t hear the shot. Elle points out she’d just had a perm: “The rules of hair care are simple and finite. Any Cosmo girl would have known.” Case closed. Reese Witherspoon kept several of Elle’s pink pieces afterwards, including the pink suit.

10) Mean Girls (2004)

Yes, Mean Girls passes the Bechdel test, even though half the plot is about Aaron Samuels.

At Cady’s first lunch with the Plastics, the talk is about Africa, bracelets and the rules of the group. Gretchen tries to launch a word, and Regina shuts her down: “Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen!”

A film about teenage girls that’s often about a boy still passes easily, because the real subject is power between the girls. Tina Fey based the script on a parenting book about how girls fight. The boy is just the prize.

9) Frozen (2013)

Yes, Frozen passes the Bechdel test, and its sisters bond over chocolate.

At the coronation party, the sisters talk for the first time in years. “It’s warmer than I thought,” says Anna. Then, at the same moment: “Chocolate!” Later they fight about Elsa’s powers and the kingdom, in the ice palace.

Don’t count “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” It’s one sister singing at a closed door. The song that changed the film was “Let It Go.” The songwriters, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, wrote it in a single day, and Jennifer Lee said she had to rewrite the whole movie around it.

8) Inside Out (2015)

Yes, Inside Out passes the Bechdel test, because two of its leads are emotions called Joy and Sadness.

Most of the film is a road trip for two. Joy and Sadness get lost in Riley’s mind and have to find their way back, arguing all the way about what Riley needs. “Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems,” says Sadness.

Riley’s video call with her friend Meg about hockey passes too. Skip Riley’s talks with her mother, who is credited only as “Mom.” The film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

7) Wicked (2024)

Yes, Wicked passes the Bechdel test, and most of its songs are two women working each other out.

The film is about a friendship between two roommates who hate each other and then don’t. “What Is This Feeling?” is loathing, “Popular” is a makeover, and “Defying Gravity” is a goodbye. None of them is about Fiyero.

Madame Morrible and Elphaba talk about Elphaba’s powers. Wicked won two Oscars, for costumes and production design. Paul Tazewell became the first Black man to win Best Costume Design.

6) Alien (1979)

Yes, Alien passes the Bechdel test, and it’s the film Alison Bechdel’s strip names.

The 1985 comic strip that started all this ends on a joke. The character says the last movie she was able to see was Alien, because “the two women in it talk to each other about the monster.”

That happened almost by accident. The script said: “The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women.” Ripley was written as a man. Fox’s Alan Ladd Jr. asked why Ripley couldn’t be a woman, and the film became Sigourney Weaver’s. Ripley and Lambert talk about the ship, the vents and escape.

5) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Yes, Mad Max: Fury Road passes the Bechdel test, in a film named after a man who is barely its hero.

Furiosa is smuggling Immortan Joe’s five wives to freedom. On the road they meet the Vuvalini, the women of the Green Place. The Dag asks the Keeper of the Seeds about her gun: “You kill people with that, do you?” The answer: “Killed everyone I’ve ever met out here.”

That’s the tone of the whole film. The women talk about seeds, freedom, fuel and where to go next. Max mostly grunts. Fury Road won six Oscars, including editing and costume design.

4) Thelma & Louise (1991)

Yes, Thelma & Louise passes the Bechdel test, because it’s two women talking in a car for two hours.

Men chase them, but the talk between Thelma and Louise is about where to go, what they’ve done and who they’re turning into. “Something’s, like, crossed over in me and I can’t go back,” Thelma tells Louise.

Callie Khouri won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The famous ending isn’t at the Grand Canyon, by the way. It was shot at Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah.

3) Hidden Figures (2016)

Yes, Hidden Figures passes the Bechdel test, and its women talk about orbits, programming and getting promoted.

The film opens with the three women stranded by the road in a broken-down car on their way to work. From there, their talk is about promotions, the new IBM computer, engineering school and the commute. Dorothy’s fight with her supervisor, Vivian Mitchell, is about the job.

Some of it is dramatised. Al Harrison, Kevin Costner’s boss, is fictional, and the real Katherine didn’t run across campus to a bathroom. The women and their work are real. The film earned three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

2) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Yes, Everything Everywhere All at Once passes the Bechdel test, and its central fight is a mother and daughter.

The multiverse is a way into one argument: Evelyn and her daughter Joy, who has become Jobu Tupaki. They talk about nihilism, the point of anything and each other, and about a bagel with everything on it. Evelyn also fights the tax inspector, Deirdre, about receipts.

It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.

1) Little Women (2019)

Yes, Little Women passes the Bechdel test, in nearly every scene, because it’s four sisters and their mother.

The March sisters talk about writing, painting, money, illness and what a woman’s life can be. In the attic, Jo tells Marmee: “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts.” Gerwig took that line from another Alcott book, Rose in Bloom.

Not every scene passes. When Aunt March tells Amy to marry well, the talk is about men and money. But the film is built on women talking to women. It won the Oscar for costume design.

Where the Bechdel Test Came From

The Bechdel test comes from “The Rule,” a 1985 strip in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For. One character explains her rule for seeing a movie: “One, it has to have at least two women in it, who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.”

Bechdel credits the idea to her friend Liz Wallace, and she prefers the name “Bechdel-Wallace test.” Wallace may have been drawing on Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. In 2013, four Swedish cinemas began giving an “A” rating to films that pass.

Famous Movies That Fail the Bechdel Test

Some of the biggest films ever made fail, and not because they’re bad.

Film	Why it fails
Star Wars (1977)	Leia and Aunt Beru are the only named women, and they never meet
The Lord of the Rings trilogy	The named women never talk to each other
The Avengers (2012)	Natasha, Pepper and Maria Hill never speak to one another
The Social Network (2010)	The named women never talk about anything but men

Avatar used to be on lists like this. It passes: bechdeltest.com upgraded it in 2021, for a scene where Grace and Trudy talk about magnetic readings.

Why Passing Isn’t the Point

Alison Bechdel has said the test’s criteria are “pretty superficial,” and that “there can be movies that completely fail the Bechdel Test that are great feminist movies.” A film can also pass and still be sexist.

So critics built other tests. The Mako Mori test, from 2013, asks whether a woman has her own story arc that doesn’t exist to support a man’s. The DuVernay test, named by New York Times critic Manohla Dargis in 2016, asks whether characters of colour have full lives rather than serving as scenery.

How to Write Scenes That Pass the Bechdel Test

1. Name your women. “Nurse” and “Mom” don’t count.
2. Put two of them in a room. A lot of scripts never do.
3. Give them a problem that isn’t a man. A job, a plan, a fight, a secret.
4. Let them disagree. Hidden Figures and Frozen pass in arguments, not small talk.

For more on building women worth writing scenes for, see our guides to character development, secondary characters and our screenwriting tips for beginners. For women behind the camera, see female filmmakers breaking barriers.

FAQs About Movies That Pass the Bechdel Test

The Final Cut on Movies That Pass the Bechdel Test

The Bechdel test is three questions, and all 15 movies above answer yes. Some scrape through in a casino, some talk for two hours in a Thunderbird.

The best movies that pass the Bechdel test don’t feel like they’re trying. Their women just have things to talk about.

Watch any film on this list and count the scenes where two women talk. Then try it on your favourite film. For more ways to read a movie, see our intertextuality examples in movies and our foreshadowing examples in movies.